Latitude The True Story of the World's First Scientific Expedition

Nicholas Crane

eBook - 2021

Latitude is a gloriously exciting tale of adventure and scientific discovery that has never been told before.Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of twelve European adventurer-scientists in the mid-eighteenth century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of 1 degree latitude at the equator. Their endeavors were not limited to this one achievement. Not only did their discovery open up the possibility for safe, accurate navigation across the seas, they also discovered rubber and quinine. With a narrative that reads like ...it was taken from the script of an adventure movie, Nicholas Crane brings to life a narrative that is a timely remind of how scientific discovery can change the world and our future. By knowing the shape of the... more