There was a BBC Horizon episode that went into each in depth to show that each is not as trivial as they seem. Money and Attention wouldn't really be able to s

There was a BBC Horizon episode that went into each in depth to show that each is not as trivial as they seem. Money and Attention wouldn't really be able to solve what they're aiming for. The example they used of why this prize was a good idea was how it helped sailors centuries ago with the ordinary watch/timepiece. It was not possible to find one's position while at sea quite long ago without accurate time. Money couldn't solve this one, no matter how they tried they couldn't accurately know where they were at sea. There were people with the resources to solve it and they did try many things but were not able to. A prize like this for a working way to find someone's position at sea accurately got someone involved in making a unconventional timepiece that would be accurate at sea. This simple breakthrough probably saved many thousands of ships & probably pushed civilization ahead a few hundred years.