author
William Hobbs
b. 1658
An early-18th-century writer tied to one of navigation’s biggest puzzles, he is remembered for a proposal on how to find longitude at sea. Very little biographical detail survives, which gives his work a faint air of mystery.
1 Audiobook
A new discovery for finding the longitude
by William Hobbs
About the author
William Hobbs is listed in bibliographic records as having been born in 1658, and he is associated with A New Discovery for Finding the Longitude, a work about solving the problem of determining longitude at sea. The book was submitted in the early 1700s, when accurate navigation was a major scientific and practical challenge.
Reliable personal details about his life are scarce in the sources available here. A record in the Grub Street Project identifies him simply as “William Hobbs (b. 1658),” while Project Gutenberg’s catalog and ebook metadata connect that name to the longitude treatise.
That leaves Hobbs as one of those historical figures known more through a surviving publication than through a full life story. Even so, his work places him among the many inventors and thinkers who tried to tackle one of the most important maritime problems of their age.