NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bob Goethe
Date: 2017 Sep 11, 10:50 -0700
The Bowditch 1977 edition of volume 1 (available for sale as of this moment at http://www.ebay.ca/itm/American-Practical-Navigator-Volume-I-Nathaniel-Bowditch-HC-1977-FREE-SHIP-/282356802741?hash=item41bdc6e4b5:g:BMsAAOSwTuJYnhtn) has a whole chapter of brief descriptions of various sight reduction methods, and there are dozens to pick from. I found this chapter fascinating, but by the 1995 edition it had been completely eliminated.
Versions of Bowditch since 1995 still tell you how to do celestial navigation, but they are thinner on why you do what you do, and what the alternate methods have been over the past century or two. I presume that this elimination was a recognition of the versatility of GPS, and an effort to keep the overall length of the publication as small as possible.
Bob
