NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Wharton & Field's Hydrographical Surveying
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 May 9, 14:35 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 May 9, 14:35 EDT
Fred H wrote:
"but before radio, made me realize that the radio probably was what done the lunar in."
While lunars were effectively dead for half a century before radio was common at sea, the corpse was not yet buried. Most professional navigators were still required to learn lunars "just in case" they needed to re-set their chronometers. Radio was the final nail in the coffin. A radio time signal could be heard almost anywhere around the world and enabled quick and easy chronometer checks at any time. That's usually cited as the immediate reason that tabulated lunars were at long last dropped from the almanacs by 1912.
Frank R
[X] Mystic, Connecticut
[ ] Chicago, Illinois
"but before radio, made me realize that the radio probably was what done the lunar in."
While lunars were effectively dead for half a century before radio was common at sea, the corpse was not yet buried. Most professional navigators were still required to learn lunars "just in case" they needed to re-set their chronometers. Radio was the final nail in the coffin. A radio time signal could be heard almost anywhere around the world and enabled quick and easy chronometer checks at any time. That's usually cited as the immediate reason that tabulated lunars were at long last dropped from the almanacs by 1912.
Frank R
[X] Mystic, Connecticut
[ ] Chicago, Illinois
