Navigation and Newsprint
Advertising Longitude Schemes in the Public Sphere ca. 1715
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14671007 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey R Wigelsworth (Mount Royal University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 351-376 |
| Publication date | 2008-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science in Context (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0269889708001828 |
| OpenAlex | W2001742429 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
Argument This article examines advertisements for potential solutions to the problem of longitude during the year following the announcement of the maximum £20,000 reward in the summer of 1714. While there have been many studies of the race to determine longitude, advertisements have not received close scrutiny. Little attention has been paid to the commoditization of longitude in the marketplace of public science sold within London's public sphere. Although books and lecture series dominated public science in eighteenth-century England, longitude ads are a unique example of this phenomenon. Unlike lecturers or publishers of natural philosophical tracts who sought audiences for demonstrations or readers for books which contained accounts of nature that were not open to debate, longitude seekers were doing something different. Those who attempted to solve the problem of longitude and advertised their plans to the public sought out witnesses to validate and confirm the effectiveness of their experiments or instruments. In other words, the public sphere became the crucible of judgment for schemes of longitude
Advertising · Business · Commoditization · Economics · Geodesy · Geography · Latitude · Longitude · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Scrutiny · Seekers · Sociology · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · History of Science and Medicine · History of Science and Natural History · Law
The birth of a consumer society
Inventing the Industrial Revolution
Communicating Science
The Nature of the Book
The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
The Newspaper Press in the Reign of William III
Patronage and Institutions
News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modem Britain
Grub Street Commerce
William Whiston, Isaac Newton and the crisis of publicity
Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England
Statistical Accounts of the London Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century
Advertising in London Newspapers, 1650–1750
Bipartisan politics and practical knowledge
Correspondence networks and the Royal Society, 1700–1750
The News Revolution in England
Ephemeral Events
"The Habermasian Public Sphere and "Science in the Enlightenment
Competing to Popularize Newtonian Philosophy
The New Science and the Public Sphere in the Premodern Era
Marketing Mathematics in Early Eighteenth-Century England
The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England
A Fractured Society
Advertising consumer goods in nineteenth-centuary Britain
A History of the Modern Fact
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |