Longitude Act passed in July 1714. For details on many of the efforts towards determining the longitude, see History of longitude. The Longitude Act offered a series of rewards, rather than a single prize. The rewards increased with the accuracy achieved: £10,000 (worth over in ) for anyone who could find a practical way of determining longitude at sea to an accuracy of not greater than one degree of longitude (equates to at the equator). The reward was to be increased to £15,000 if the accuracy was not greater than 40 minutes, and further enhanced to £20,000 if the accuracy was not
History of longitude 2nd century BC Hipparchus was the first to use such a system to uniquely specify places on Earth. He also proposed a system of determining longitude by comparing the local time of a place with an absolute time. This is the first recognition that longitude can be determined by accurate knowledge of time. In the 11th century Al-Biruni believed the earth rotated on its axis and this forms our modern notion of how time and longitude are related. Determining latitude was relatively easy in that it could be found from the altitude of the sun at noon (i.e. at its