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I much appreciated Frank Reed's comparison of Old and New.

Dan observed that 'Publications usually follow practice by a period of
time'.  I suppose it would be fair to  say that practices follow innovations
by a period of time also

A friend who sailed out of Liverpool as a cadet with Blue Funnel line in the
sixties tells that the master insisted that all sight reductions should be
done using spherical trig calculations rather than the 'Air Reduction'
methods which were available, but which he despised.  He is said to have
thrown copies of manuals (I suppose Marine Reduction tables) over the side.

Sight reduction methods and their supporting publications have always had to
presume little computational skill if ordinary seafarers were to be able to
make use of such methods.  This has always been traded off by the necessity
to memorise complex and arcane procedures.  For seamen with limited numeracy
learning one method was a major investment and a treasured achievement.  It
would be the exceptional master who was prepared to adopt a 'new' method in
his working time.

Publications have to support practice.  Data supporting lunar methods were
published in the Nautical Almanac until, when was it, 1917?

A little by the way:  despite the portrayal of Maskelyne in Dava Sobel's
book I have always thought of him as a giant of a man.  Devising and
organising the calculation by hand of the Nautical Almanac to be a usable
tool for navigators seems to me a supreme achievement.  He produced and made
available to all a working device.  For all Harrison's genius it took others
to make chronometers equally available to all.

Geoff Butt

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Allen 
To: 
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: The Old vs. The New


: On Sunday, January 18, 2004, at 04:19 PM, Frank Reed wrote:
:
: > When did the New take over decisively from the Old?
:
: Interesting question.  Early editions of Bowditch's American Practical
: Navigator had separate chapters entitled  "Latitude" and "Longitude".
: I was just musing over this the other day, so it is interesting that
: you give as a distinction between the Old school and the New school
: that Old school looks at the determination of these as separate
: activities.
:
: Well, all editions of Bowditch from the 1800s have separate chapters on
: Latitude and Longitude.  All editions of Bowditch from the early 1900s
: also continue to have separate chapters on Latitude and Longitude.  My
: last edition where these chapters still exist is a 1943 edition.
:
: The edition that made the big switch is the 1958 edition of Bowditch,
: which in many respects happens to be my very favorite edition of all
: time.  It appears that sometime post WWII the New school was firmly
: entrenched enough that when they did the big revision of Bowditch for
: the 1958 edition they no longer have chapters named "Latitude" and
: "Longitude".  Instead there is simply a chapter named "Sight Reduction"
: where it is all rolled into one activity.
:
: Publications usually follow practice by a period of time, so the switch
: in practice probably happened during WWII and they didn't have the time
: to update Bowditch during the war.  Do we have any veterans of the war
: on the list that can comment on the practices at sea during the war?
: Were they St. Hilaire's based or Old school?
:
: My collection has a gap between the 1943 and 1958 Bowditch editions.
: Do any of our list members have an edition of Bowditch published after
: 1943 and before 1958?  I have never seen or heard of one.  I'd like to
: know since this was one of the big gaps in my collection.  Another big
: gap is from 1888 until 1917, but I digress...
:
: Dan
:
:
:

   

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