Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/633

 LONG ISLAND SOUND wood there are many beautiful drives and handsome residences. The plan has been lib- erally projected, with wide streets and avenues and three parks, but the actual laying out of the city has not advanced far. A handsome brick court house, to cost $200,000, is in course of erection, and when it is completed the coun- ty seat of Queens co. will be removed to this place. Two ferries ply between Hunter's Point and New York, and Astoria is connected with that city by ferry and by the Harlem and Mor- risania boats. Four lines of horse cars run to various parts of the city and to Brooklyn. Hunter's Point is the terminus of the Long Island, Flushing and North Side, and Central railroads, and contains the freight depot of the South Side line. It is the great depot for the storage and shipment of refined petroleum con- signed to the New York market, and contains extensive lumber yards, a marine railway, three or four oil refineries, granite works, and manu- factories of cabinet ware, varnish, chemicals, refrigerators, hammers, boilers and steam en- gines, asbestus roofing, mattresses, tinware, &c. A very extensive manufactory of piano- fortes has recently been erected at Astoria, where there are also manufactories of carriages, carpets, and jewelry. The city has five ward school houses, a daily and five weekly news- papers, a Baptist and a Methodist mission, and 14 churches, viz. : Baptist, Episcopal (4), Meth- odist (3), Presbyterian, Reformed, and Roman Catholic (4). It was formed from a portion of the town of Newtown, and was incorpo- rated by the act of May 6, 1870. LONG ISLAND SOUND, a large body of water lying between Long Island and New York and Connecticut, about 110 m. long, and varying from 2 to 20 m. in width. On the west it is connected with the Atlantic by a strait called the East river, New York bay, and the Nar- rows, and on the east by a narrow passage called the. Race. The principal rivers flowing into the sound from the mainland are the Hou- satonic, Connecticut, and Thames. It is in the route of a very large and important trade be- tween the city of New York and the eastern states, and is navigated by many regular lines of packets and steamers. There are numerous lighthouses on its coasts. LONGITUDE, in geography, an arc of the equator included between the meridian of a place and the meridian whence the degrees are counted, which is usually called the first merid- ian. The ancient geographers drew the first meridian through Ferro, the westernmost of the Canary islands, and they are still followed by the geographers of Germany and eastern Eu- rope (who draw it, however, a little E. of the island). The English call the first meridian that which passes through Greenwich ; the French, that of Paris ; the Spaniards, that of Madrid. The inhabitants of the United States general- ly use Greenwich, though the longitude from Washington is also used. An easy method of ascertaining the longitude at sea had been LONGITUDE 627 wanted since the improvements in navigation, and after the improvement of the quadrant by Hadley and Godfrey it was the thing most de- sired to make navigation perfect. When de- duced from the course and the distance, as was then the custom, the mariner had but little trust in his own work ; and as late as 1820 vessels at sea on speaking each other never omitted the inquiry, " What is your longitude ? " a com- mon sympathy also causing them on "heaving in sight " to steer toward each other. Almost every method of determining the longitude de- pends on the obtaining the difference of time between your first meridian and that which passes through the place where you are ; the time at the latter can be easily obtained by means of altitudes of the sun or other heavenly bodies, but the great difficulty is to find the time elsewhere, the difference of time being one hour to 15 of longitude. John Werner was the first to recommend the use of lunar distances for this purpose (1514) ; but at that time there were neither lunar tables nor in- struments for measuring the distance between the moon and a star. Gemma Frixius was the first to suggest the use of timekeepers (1530), but the art of watch-making was then in its infancy. The great importance to navigation of determining the longitude induced various governments to offer rewards for some prac- tical method. Spain offered 1,000 crowns for its solution as early as 1598, and the states of Holland soon after 10,000 florins; but it was not till 1714 that encouragement was offered in Great Britain, when an act was passed in parliament allowing 2,000 toward making ex- periments, and offering a reward to the person who should discover the best means of deter- mining the longitude at sea, proportioned to the degree of accuracy that might be attained by such discovery. The result was the inven- tion by John Harrison and the gradual perfec- tion of the chronometer, which "is now in gen- eral use, and to which alone we are indebted for the shortening of passages at sea, as by its use vessels can steer as direct for port as the ocean and winds will allow without fear of falling to leeward as formerly. (See CLOCKS AND WATCHES, and HAKRISON, JOHN.) When the final award was made to Mr. Harrison, the acts concerning longitude were repealed, except so much as related to the publishing of the nau- tical almanac and other useful tables. It was also enacted that any person who should dis- cover a method for finding the longitude by means of a timekeeper the principles of which had not previously been made public, should be entitled to a reward of 5,000, if after cer- tain trials made by the commissioners the said method should enable a ship to keep her longi- tude during a voyage of six months within 60 geographical miles or a degree of a great circle, of 7,500 if within 40 geographical miles, and of 10,000 if within 30 geographical miles. If the method be by improved astronomical tables, the author becomes entitled to 5,000 when