Meanings of determine longitude in English

They wished to discover secret routes-andthat meant discovering a means to determine longitude.

Without any way to accurately determine longitude, ships frequently get lost at sea, causing shipwrecks and disrupting global trade.

And it was in the arena of mapmaking that the ability to determine longitude won its first great victory.

Palatial observatories were founded at Paris, London, and Berlin for the express purpose of determining longitude by the heavens.

He fancied that he had discovered a method of determining longitudes at sea by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites.

I find letters from Dr Robinson and Col. Colby about determining longitudes of certain observatories by fire signals: I proposed chronometers as preferable.

Because precise portable clocks did not exist, navigators had no means of determining longitude, which is most easily measured as a function of time.

£20,000 (the equivalent of millions of dollars today) for a method to determine longitude to an accuracy of half a degree of a great circle;