Book Review: Measuring Longitude by Telegraphy: Finding North America: Longitude by Wire

Abstract

MEASURING LONGITUDE BY TELEGRAPHY Finding North America: Longitude by Wire. Richard Stachurski (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2009). Pp. ? + 239. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-57003-801-3.This book tells a story. Focusing on the U.S. Coast Survey from the early to midnineteenth century, Stachurski narrates the development of a telegraphic method for measuring longitude. It is a competently told story, in the main, and Stachurski provides a readable overview of this important technological development for a general audience. Based largely on published sources, embellished with some imagined scene painting, Longitude by wire aims to bring a vivid set of characters to life in a drama of public science writ large.The opening chapters centre on Ferdinand Hassler, who first led the Coast Survey, following the travails and (partial) triumphs of the Swiss-born savant as he struggled to bring European scientific precision and rigour to a public project meant to serve American pragmatic ends. The remainder of the book focuses on the Coast Survey under Alexander Dallas Bache, one of the most prominent American scientists of the mid-nineteenth century. It was during Bache's superintendency that the innovative method of using telegraphs to coordinate precise time signals - and therefore to measure longitude - came to fruition. One gets a strong sense of the details of problem-solving at the ground level, the challenges and their resolutions.In one sense, it is impressive that Stachurski managed to coax such a textured narrative out of published sources alone. Based primarily on government reports and secondary sources, though perhaps a bit more lightly footnoted than most historians would like, the book reveals well-grounded insights from straightforward readings of those publications. Yet one wonders if an even deeper and richer story could be told through archival materials, especially relating to the practice of the Coast Survey. This could potentially reveal even more about the roles of various subordinate workers, interactions with locals, and further challenges that were smoothed over or ignored in the published reports. There is already enough of a taste of these matters in the book - and their importance to the practice of the Coast Survey - that the reader is left wanting to know still more about what was going on behind the scenes.The orientation of the book tilts toward a general, rather than scholarly, audience. Many basic methods and technologies are presented with textbook-type diagrams and illustrations. …