NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Nautical astronomy was different
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 Oct 24, 03:04 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 Oct 24, 03:04 EDT
Trevor K wrote:
"But a chronometer is a chronometer, not a watch to be re-set daily."
Close-reading of old navigation manuals is a VERY risky business. The original text by Bowditch refered to a watch --plain and simple. Someone later, probably in error, changed the word to chronometer (I have noted that a likely candidate is Bowditch's son, N.I. Bowditch who took over the publication after his father's death in 1837). As I have said before, when people study Bowditch they learn something important about how certain specific people believed that navigation should be taught. We're studying a textbook, an object of commerce subject to the whims and errors of its editors. It is easy to be seduced into believing that this is equivalent to studying the actual practice of navigation. It's a close second, but it is not the real thing.
Frank R
[ ] Mystic, Connecticut
[X] Chicago, Illinois
"But a chronometer is a chronometer, not a watch to be re-set daily."
Close-reading of old navigation manuals is a VERY risky business. The original text by Bowditch refered to a watch --plain and simple. Someone later, probably in error, changed the word to chronometer (I have noted that a likely candidate is Bowditch's son, N.I. Bowditch who took over the publication after his father's death in 1837). As I have said before, when people study Bowditch they learn something important about how certain specific people believed that navigation should be taught. We're studying a textbook, an object of commerce subject to the whims and errors of its editors. It is easy to be seduced into believing that this is equivalent to studying the actual practice of navigation. It's a close second, but it is not the real thing.
Frank R
[ ] Mystic, Connecticut
[X] Chicago, Illinois
