Board of Longitude chronometers, keeping) the time of the reference place when one is far away from it. For details of the efforts towards determining the longitude, see History of longitude. For many decades a sufficiently accurate chronometer was prohibitively expensive. The lunar distance method was used by mariners either in conjunction with or instead of the marine chronometer. However, with the expectation that accurate clocks would eventually become commonplace, John Harrison showed that his method was the way of the future. However the board, to its discredit, never awarded the prize to Harrison, nor anyone else. With the significant problems considered as
Minute and second of arc are traditionally given using degrees, minutes, and seconds of arcs for latitude, the arc north or south of the equator, and for longitude, the arc east or west of the Prime Meridian. Any position on or above the Earth's reference ellipsoid can be precisely given with this method. However, when it is inconvenient to use base-60 for minutes and seconds, positions are frequently expressed as decimal fractional degrees to an equal amount of precision. Degrees given to three decimal places ( of a degree) have about the precision of degrees-minutes-seconds ( of a degree) and specify locations within about 120