ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Longitude Prize

Okay kiddo, so imagine you and your friends are playing a game of hide and seek. You are the seeker and your friends are the hiders. You close your eyes and start counting while your friends go and hide. Once you finish counting, you try to find your friends by using clues and hints.

Now, imagine that instead of playing hide and seek, we are trying to find a way to know where we are in the world. This is important because it helps us know how to get to different places and how to travel safely.

A long time ago, nobody really knew how to know where they were in the world. But people wanted to find a solution, kind of like how you want to find your friends when playing hide and seek. So they came up with an idea called the Longitude Prize.

The Longitude Prize was a way to encourage people to find a solution to this problem. Just like how your parents might offer you a prize if you do well on a test, the British government offered a prize to anyone who could come up with an accurate way to know where you are in the world.

This was a big challenge because people had tried for a long time to figure it out, but nobody had been successful yet. But because of the prize, people started working really hard and coming up with new solutions. Eventually, a man named John Harrison won the prize by inventing a special clock that could help sailors know where they were in the world.

So, the Longitude Prize was like a big game or challenge to find a way to know where you are in the world. And just like with any challenge, if you work hard and try your best, you might just be able to find a solution and win a prize!