NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
1906 Bowditch
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2007 Aug 14, 18:55 -0700
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2007 Aug 14, 18:55 -0700
Google Books now has a scan of the 1906 Bowditch in addition to the 1826 Bowditch. They've added a couple of nice features to the interface recently. Google Books now offers an option to view the books using "HTML mode" which does not require the overhead of PDF files. Also, you can now look at the plain text generated by OCR from the scans. Previously this was only available "behind the scenes" for searching purposes, but now you can view it directly. So for example, I can copy and paste these lines from the opening section of the appendix on lunar distances from the 1906 Bowditch: "APPENDIX V. LTJNAE DISTANCES. [sic -that's OCR] By reason of the comparative rapidity of motion of the moon relatively to the earth, it occurs that the angular distance, measured from the earth, between the moon and a body that occupies a fixed, or nearly fixed, position in the celestial sphere, is constantly changing. If, therefore, an observer accurately measures with a sextant the angle between the moon and one of the various celestial bodies for which the lunar distance is tabulated in the Nautical Almanac, this observed distance, reduced to true distance, affords a means for determining the absolute instant of time at which the observation was taken; and from this may be deduced the longitude and the chronometer error. " For ye Wikipedians, I should add that it is legitimate to copy and paste this into Wikipedia articles. It is not under copyright. -FER http://www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
