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Fred you wrote:
"Frank Reed responded to this  argument claiming that Slocum had not
uncovered an error in the table but  rather had merely corrected a
blunder.  I see no reason to suppose that  Frank's claim is true, but
rather prefer to take Slocum at his  word."

I take Slocum at his word that he *believed* he had detected an  error and
corrected it (on the first pass over this topic, you seemed to think I  was
suggesting he was lying and that is most certainly not what I meant). I take
Slocum's talk of an "error in his tables" to be a description of a common human
experience: when we're very good at something and proud of it, but a little out
 of practice, we will tend to blame our tools if anything goes wrong. A
skilled  carpenter who hasn't built anything in years may blame his saw for a rough
cut,  and Slocum may have blamed his tables when things didn't go right in
that lunar  calculation.

And:
"Given that lunars are a rather difficult  observation and involve a
different computation than usual, I believe that  Slocum was performing
them on a regular basis"

Amazingly enough, there  is direct evidence from Slocum himself --beyond what
we read in SAATW-- that he  used lunars only once in 24,000 miles at  sea.

-FER
http://www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars

   

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