Thank you, William J. H. Andrewes, the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, for first introducing me to the lore of longitude, and for hosting the Longitude Symposium in Cambridge, November 4-6, 1993.
Thanks, too, to the editors of Harvard Magazine— especially John Bethell, Christopher Reed, Jean Martin, and Janet Hawkins—for sending me to the Longitude Symposium and publishing my article about it as the cover story in the March/April 1994 issue.
Thanks also to the judges of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, Publications Division, for awarding my longitude article their 1994 Gold Medal for the best feature in an alumni magazine.
Special thanks to George Gibson, Publisher of Walker and Company, for reading that article, seeing it as the beginning of a book—and calling me out of the blue to say so.
And to Michael Carlisle, Vice President of the William Morris Agency, thank you so much for representing this project with more than your usual flair.