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Longitude Acts

The Board of Longitude existed from 1714 until 1828. The original Act of Parliament that created the Board, or to be more precise, appointed the Commissioners for the Discovery of the Longitude at Sea (also referred to as the Commissioners for the Discovery of Longitude) was passed in 1714. As well as appointing the Commissioners, the act also spelt out their duties and the awards at their disposal. First added to in 1741, the act was subsequently amended or repealed and replaced on numerous occasions until the Board was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1828.

In 1998, in his paper about the Board’s finances, Derek Howse identified and published a list of the 21 Acts he had discovered that related to the Commissioners for the Discovery of Longitue. Regretably, his list omitted the act of 1776 (16 Geo 3. c.6) which concerned the discovery of a north west passage and can be regarded as the precursor of sections 9–14 of the 1818 Longitude Act (58 Geo 3. c.20). The 1776 act built on an earlier act, by adding the Commissioners of Longitude to the Commissioners appointed by an act of 1745 (18 Geo. 2, c.17) to administer the rewards offered for ‘discovering a north west passage through Hudson’s Streights’. Although the 1745 act did not involve the Comissioners for the Discovery of Longitude, it is included in the list below because of its significance as a precursor act.

In the second edition of his book A Practical Treatise on the Law of Patents for Inventions and of Copyright, Richard Godson lists these 23 acts together (including 18 Geo. 2, c.17), suggesting that the list below is complete.

Intriguingly, of the 23 acts, copies or just 16 are preserved amongst the papers of the Board of Longitude, at the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives at Cambridge. Digitised in the 2010s they can be viewed at the Cambridge Digital Library. The links below are to these digitised Acts where they exist and to other digitised versions where they don’t.

See also Transcripts of the 23 Longitude Acts (on one web-page).

*  Three drafts can be found at RGO14/1/63, RGO14/1/68 and RGO14/1/73.
** A draft can be found at RGO14/1/87