Origins of the Longitude Prize on AMR

Determining longitude was a problem that haunted sailors for centuries. Without being able to establish this crucial navigational tool, captains of ships were plotting journeys based on guesswork. As a result, between 1550 and 1650, one in five ships was lost between Portugal and India.

In 1714, merchants and sea captains brought a petition to the British Parliament to solve the longitude problem. The Longitude Act, issued on July 8, 1714, was the government’s response and offered up £20,000 prize (about £1.5m today) for a method to determine longitude to an accuracy of half a degree.

Today, the motivations of the Longitude Prize are to address significant scientific challenges to society. Although the Longitude Prize was created in a previous era, its structure has proven just as good at attracting diverse entrants in the 21^st century as it did three centuries ago.

The first Longitude Prize winner

The original Longitude Prize was won by John Harrison, a carpenter from Yorkshire who had recently taken up clock-making. Harrison’s clocks were considered high-tech for the time, they were virtually frictionless and required no lubrication. Without oil, a clock had a much better chance of staying accurate at sea.

While Harrison was never awarded the full £20,000, he won the most money of all the contenders, with his fourth maritime clock – or chronometer – successful in meeting the prize goals.

Today’s prizes

In 2014, Challenge Works (an enterprise owned by Nesta) worked with the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees to create a Longitude Prize for a new age. Together, they launched a nation-wide competition for the UK public to decide the focus of a new Longitude Prize.

Challenge Works, in collaboration with scientists, academics and researchers, sought to identify the most significant challenges facing society today. The working group ultimately identified the issues as: antibiotic resistance, dementia, green flight, sustainable food, paralysis and access to water.

The choice of challenges was presented on BBC Horizon television in 2014, with the case for each segment made by an expert in the area.

At the end of the programme, the public was asked to vote for the focus of the prize. More than 15,000 votes were cast, with antibiotic resistance coming out on top.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) – also known as antibiotic resistance or superbugs – is a silent, growing and devastating pandemic where bacteria have developed resistance to the lifesaving antibiotics at the heart of modern medicine, following a century of unnecessary or untargeted prescriptions.

Formally welcomed by then Prime Minister, and launched by experts including Dame Sally Davis, since the initial vote, Challenge Works has since launched prizes aligned with all of the original themes, including the Longitude Prize on Dementia, the Mobility Unlimited Challenge and the Water Breakthrough Challenges for Ofwat’s Innovation Fund.