As I recall, it was written/uttered by Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame. I think. I recall it as being a mite absurd, mentioning different things that were considered well-nigh impossible in his time including, I think, “to find the longitude”…anyone have a clue as to what I’m talking about?
Maybe this is it? It’s from Alice’s thoughts while she’s falling down the rabbit hole.
“I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?” (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
That’s all I could turn up in my Google searches…maybe I’ve got the wrong author or something. I think I read the quote in Dava Sobel’s Longitude…but, then I read a lot of stuff like that, so who knows…
In Lewis Carroll’s time, the problem of longitude had already been solved; the first practical use of clocks to determine it was in 1764.
So it couldn’t have been Carroll.
I seem to recall Jonathan Swift mentioned it in “Gulliver’s Travels.” The quotes I’ve found talk about his discussing the issue with the Struldbuggs.
The paragraph is mean satirically (of course – this is Swift).
Ah-HA! That’s IT! I kinda thought Carroll might be too late for what I was thinking…the next mystery is why I thought it was him and not Swift…