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> (1) Baffin spent the day before (8th July 1612) marking out a meridian
> line
> on a small island. On this occasion, he doesn?t explain his method but
> marks
> the extremities of the line with long plumblines.

Mentioning "plumblines": An early method of determining the north-south
direction consisted in looking at the sun's shadow of a vertical pole on a
horizontal plane. Could it be that he used a similar method?

The following book from David A. King, who is a Professor at Frankfurt
University, may contain more on techniques possibly also used in Europe
during medieval times  http://www.brill.nl/m_catalogue_sub1.htm  The price
of the book is however not for everybody's budget. May be you can ask your
library to acquire the book.
.

   

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