Greenwich time and the longitude

"This classic official history of Greenwich Time and the discovery of longitude - revised, updated and with new colour illustrations - has been republished in preparation for the Millennium. It tells the story of Greenwich Time from 1676, when it was first established for use at the newly created Royal Observatory at Greenwich, to the present day, when it has become the basis of timekeeping the world over." "It is also the story of the finding of longitude at sea, which was the specific problem that Charles II founded the Royal Observatory to solve, over 300 years ago. Greenwich became an international household name when, in 1884, its longitude - not that of Paris, Washington or the Great Pyramid - was chosen as the world's Prime Meridian of time and navigation, Longitude 0[degree]." "Derek Howse describes, in simple terms, the relevant developments in astronomy, navigation and timekeeping from the 1670s to the present day - with the atomic clock, Global Positioning System and leap second - and how Greenwich Time has been found, kept and distributed. Co-ordinated Universal Time (the time-scale which is the basis of all the world's time signals) is still firmly based on Greenwich Time and is never more than a second from it."--BOOK JACKET.