Offering 20,000 pounds back in 1714 was like offering millions of dollars today. Who wouldn’t want to win that longitude prize money? All you had to do was devise a precise method for finding your location on Earth.
The responses didn’t come pouring in overnight. You may have noticed that the big naval disaster on the Scilly Islands happened a whole 7 years before Parliament got around to forming the Longitude Commission. Some serious brainwork—and tinkering—needed to be put in. This was going to take awhile. As mentioned earlier, time/distance/astronomy are interlinked. The people who responded to the Longitude Commission’s offer worked in astronomy and time.
There were 2 main competitors in the race to find longitude: an astronomer and a clockmaker.
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