More Prizes!

I was reading up on the Longitude Act of 1714, which offered prizes to anyone who could find a practical way of determining longitude at sea (the main winner developed an accurate clock).

Today, we have the Ansari X Prize (US$10M to the first NGO to launch the same manned spaceship into space twice within 2 weeks) and the Methuselah Mouse Prize (prize amount based on how much longer your mouse lives than the prior longest-lived mouse).

So can anyone else think of good prizes to offer pre-1900? I was thinking the UK (or maybe Russia or France) could offer prizes based on who can get the furthest south, although that might lead to captains just lying about how far south they went.
 
This was not uncommon at all. Prizes the French government pledged gave us canning and margarine. Smaller organisations often promised cash prizes for the best idea to solve certain problems submitted in essay form (on the assumption that if it looked good on paper, it would work - it was the Enlightenment). Even when no specific prize was pledged, the material rewards for successful explorers and scientists could be considerable in the 19th century. Men like Stanley could live very comfortably even if they did not become mega-rich (bear in mind from how far down the social scale Stanley came).

Specific instances - mainly geographic or scientific ones. Technical ways of resolving current problems tended top be rewarded in terms of patent royalties. But in any case I'd check if there wasn't one pledged already. A lot of people and organisations did that at the time.
 
Heavier then air flight and wireless communication would be something that the a cash prize could be offered on.
 
What about prizes for exploration? I'm thinking specifically of North America here, so maybe a prize in the 1600s for the discovery of a route from the great Lakes to the gulf of Mexico, or in the 1700s for a route from Hudson bay to the Pacific?? Certainly much of the interior waterways were charted by individuals rather than well-funded expeditions, and i'm wondering in what cases discovery of a new route would be worth offering a prize.
 
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