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今年3月,一个伟大的人物约翰·哈里森诞辰300周年。由于他发明了航海天文钟,结束了人们盲目航行的历史,拉开了现代航海的序幕。在哈里森之前,人们只知道纬度而不知经度,因而在航海时无法在水天一色的茫茫大海中确定所处的位置。这不仅使海难频繁发生,也阻碍了航海业的扩展。17世纪下半叶,英国启蒙思想家开始考虑这个问题,并于1675年在格林尼治建立皇家天文台进行经度探测。英国政府也于1714年宣布将对找到确定经度方法的人给予2万英镑的重奖,而且还专门成立了经度委员会负责此事,该委员会包括了海军大臣、贸易大臣、天文学家、数学家等权威人士。当时众多的专家学者大都主张从天文学中寻找答案,但各种方案都一一碰壁。这个棘手难题最后被一个钟表匠解决了。
In March this year, 300th anniversary of the birth of a great figure John Harrison. As he invented the Nautical Astronomy, the end of the history of people’s blind sailing, opened the prelude to modern navigation. Prior to Harrison, people knew latitude only and did not know longitude, so they were unable to determine their place in the vast sea of water and sky at sea. This not only made the frequent shipwreck but also hindered the expansion of the maritime industry. In the second half of the 17th century, British enlightenment thinkers started to consider this issue and in 1675 set up the Royal Observatory in Greenwich to conduct longitude exploration. The British government also announced in 1714 that it would award a grand prize of 20,000 pounds to those who found a method of determining longitude and set up a special longitude committee in charge of the issue, including the Secretary of the Navy, the Minister of Trade, astronomers, mathematicians and other authorities person. At that time, a large number of experts and scholars advocated searching for answers from astronomy, but all kinds of programs hit the wall. This tricky problem was eventually solved by a watchmaker.