Abt BC 1500: Egyptians divided the day into 24 hours, though the hours varied with the seasons originally. BC 700: Homer, Greek, tells of Odysseus navigating by the Great Bear. BC 600: The Greeks build the first navigational aid, a lighthouse at Sigeum. Abt BC 500:? The Mesopotamians divide a circle into 360 degrees, a day into 24 hours, an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds. BC 240: Eratosthenes, Greek, calculates Earth's circumference with great accuracy. BC 150: Hipparchus, Greek, invents the astrolabe, the first instrument for taking sights on heavenly bodies. He also proposes a system of latitude and longitude. BC 120: Zhang Heng, Chinese, creates the first geographic grid for maps. 150 c: In Alexandria, the Greek astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy lists latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of 8,000 places on Earth. His maps depict Earth as a great landmass with small oceans. 1100 c: AI-Idrisi, In China, the first written account of the magnetic compass used as a navigational aid appears. 1154: Arab, writes Book of Roger, a survey of all countries then known, and creates a rectangular world map. 1200: Compass in use at sea in Europe Abt 1250: Portolan or portulan charts are navigational maps based on compass directions and estimated distances observed by the pilots at sea 1280: First appearances of weight driven clocks 1300: European portolan charts of the Mediterranean and Black seas show compass directions. The compass card is divided into 32 points of direction. 1310: Earliest reference to a sandglass. 1406: A Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geographia begins to circulate in Europe. 1418: Prince Henry (1394 – 1460) the Navigator of Portugal founds the first navigation academy at Sagres, Portugal, to collect navigational data and produce charts. 1450: Spring driven clocks appear. 1457: George Purback issued first almanac 1460: Nautical quadrant in use at sea (earliest mention) 1464: Johann Muller, German, writes the first major exposition of trigonometry, enabling navigators to calculate the relationship of celestial bodies and the location of ships. 1470 c: The age of European exploration begins. 1474: Abraham Zacuto issued Almanach Perpetuum containing sun's declination 1480 c: The Portuguese compile latitude tables for the first navigation manual, which also tells how to determine latitude by sighting the noon sun. 1481: Mariner's Astrolabe in use at sea (Portuguese sailing down African Coast) 1482: Earliest reference to a watch. 1485: Pedro Reinel map of African Coast 1485: Tables of sun's declination in manuscript form 1492: Columbus's first voyage to the Americas 1492: Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer sailing for Spain, discovers Earth's landmass is much smaller and its oceans are much larger than Ptolemy reckoned. 1492: Martin Behaim, German, creates the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. 1493: Pope Alexander VI established 0º longitude in the Atlantic Ocean West of the Azores to divide territories of Spain and Portugal. 1500: Gerard Mercator (fl 1537-1594) brought map/chart making to an exact science 1509: Table of sun's declination in printed form in Portugal 1514: Johannes Werner, a Nürnberger priest and mathematician, first put forward the theory of Lunar Distance. 1515: Cross-Staff in use at sea by Portuguese for latitude by Polaris 1519: Ferdinand Magellan in service of Spain leaves 20 September on circumnavigation 1522: Ferdinand Magellan's crew completes the first circumnavigation of the globe. The log, accurately kept by Antonio Pigafetta, Italian, is one day short of local time, proving Earth is round. 1530: Gemma Frisius suggests using a clock for finding longitude. 1545: Arte de Navagar by Pedro de Medina published in Spain 1567: King Phillip II of Spain offers prize for method of finding Longitude at Sea 1569: Gerhardus Mercator, Flemish, produces a map of the globe that depicts parallels that are more widely spaced at higher latitudes. Navigators can now draw straight lines that cross all meridians at the same angle. These rhumb lines represent a ship's constant compass direction. 1570: Map of the World by Fernando Oliveira 1570: Abraham Ortelius, Flemish, produces the first modern atlas. 1571 Leonard Digges, English mathematician and surveyor, invents the Theodolite 1574: A Regiment for the Sea by William Bourne, London published 1595: Back-Staff (Davis Quadrant) in use at sea 1595-1765 1596: King Philip III of Spain increases sum of the longitude prize. 1600 c: Magnetic variations begin to appear on maps and tables. 1601: Dutch Republic and States of Holland offer separate longitude prizes. 1610: Galileo Galilei discovers Jupiter’s Moons 1614: John Napier, Scottish, publishes the first table of logarithms, facilitating onboard calculation of trigonometric position. 1620: The Mayflower arrives in Plymouth Harbor and the English Puritans establish the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts. 1624: Edmund Gunter, English clergyman, mathematician, geometer and astronomer designs forerunner to slide rule with scales for Chords, Rumbs, Merodial Parts, Leagues, and various common logarithms used in navigational geometry. 1631: Pierre Vernier publishes La construction, l'usage, et les propriétés du quadrant nouveau de mathématique and describes a new way to make scales for precision measurement. 1649: Galileo's son Vincenzo builds a model of his father's idea for pendulum clock. 1654: Dutch East India Company started keeping inventory of navigational gear 1655: Cross-Staff, Mariner's Astrolabe, Back-Staff, and nautical almanac are used for declination 1657: Christiaan Huygens invents a working pendulum clock. 1670: Mariner's Astrolabe no longer listed in East India Company inventory 1675: Robert Hook and Christiaan Huygens independently invent a watch balance spring. 1675: Royal Observatory founded in Greenwich, England. 1680: Watches with minutes and second hands appear. 1686: Edmond Halley, English, produces the first weather map, which shows the direction of trade winds. 1696: French National Observatory's Nautical Almanac first published 1698: Edmund Halley studies variation of the compass 1698-1701 1700: Halley produces the first map showing variation of Earth's magnetic field. 1714: Act of Queen Anne establishing Board of Longitude 1714: English Parliament and French Academie des Sciences establish separate longitude prizes. 1714: Longitude Act, passed by Parliament of the United Kingdom, establishes the Board of Longitude and offers monetary rewards for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude. 1714: England’s Parliament established the Longitude Act on July 8th that offered a prize of 20,000 pounds for a method to determine longitude to an accuracy of half a degree of a great circle. 1731: John Hadley, English, and Thomas Godfrey, American, working independently, invent the reflecting octant, a precise instrument for measuring the altitude of celestial bodies. 1731: East India Company discontinues use of the Davis quadrant at sea 1731: Quadrant of Reflection Hadley & Godfrey 1735: John Harrison completes H.1 Tested 1736 Centurion & Orford to Lisbon and back 1740: Anson aboard HMS Centurion with fleet to capture Manila Galleon and circumnavigation 1747: Octant was standard issue on Dutch East India Company ships 1755: The first edition of English astronomer Nevil Maskelyne's annual Nautical Almanac appears. It contains tables of celestial positions for 1767 to help sailors determine location. 1757: Under the direction of fellow Englishman John Campbell, John Bird elongates the arc of the octant to 60 degrees, the sextant of a circle. 1759: John Harrison completes his prize-winning marine time piece 1761: First sea trials of John Harrison's H4 demonstrate the feasibility of a sea clock. 1761-1762 1762: Harrison H4 Clock 1763: An improved version of Tobias Mayer lunar ephemeris tables formed the bases of Lunars technique for finding Greenwich Time at sea. 1763: Nevil Maskelyne, fifth British Astronomer Royal, publishes the British Mariner's Guide with updated Mayer's table and instructions for lunar observing and calculating time and longitude. 1766: First Nautical Almanac with Lunar Tables published for the year 1767 1766: Pierre Le Roy creates a sea clock with modern features. 1764: The British prize was won by John Harrison in 1764 for his seagoing chronometer accurate to one-tenth of a second per day. Awards were progressive and contested. 1768: Captain James Cook's first circumnavigation, without chronometers 1768-1771 1769: John Bird makes sextant for John Cambell 1769: Larcum Kendall makes accurate copy of John Harrison's H4, known as K1 for Board of Longitude, replication of Harrison's watch a requirement for making final award payment to Harrison 1770: Jesse Ramsden completes his dividing engine for making sextant scales 1770: Israel Lyons selected by the Astronomer Royal to compute astronomical tables for the first Nautical Almanac 1772: James Cook tests Kendall's K1 copy of Harrison's H4 clock on second South Seas Journey (HMS Resolution 1772-75) with full satisfaction. 1776: James Cook again uses K1 on third voyage (HMS Resolution 1776-80) but mainspring breaks and could not be repaired at sea. 1766: The first edition of English astronomer Nevil Maskelyne's annual Nautical Almanac appears. It contains tables of celestial positions for 1767 to help sailors determine location. 1779: James Cook used Harrison’s chronometer to circumvent the globe and when he returned in 1779 his calculations of longitude based upon the chronometer proved correct to within 8 miles. 1790: George Margetts publishes New Method of Working Lunar Observations for Finding the Longitude at Sea, a unique graphic method for clearing lunar distances almost eliminated all mathematics 1800 C: Analemmas (of sun) first appear in conjunction with sundials to convert between apparent and mean solar time 1802: Nathaniel Bowditch first publishes his navigation handbook. 1802: The New American Practical Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch is published. 1802: Jose de Mendoza y Rios, Spanish astronomer and member of the Royal Society of London, publishes a method for working lunars 1803: Matthew Flinders, English, writes a paper explaining how to compensate for compass deviation caused by shipboard iron. 1805: The Admiralty issued new official standards for log books in which each page corresponded to civilian time keeping, with the top line 12 midnight, all of the am hours, 12 noon in the middle of the page, and all of the pm hours following 1812: Boston clockmaker William Cranch Bond makes first seagoing chronometer made in America, British makers dominated the world market at that time. 1815: William Cranch Bond finishes a chronometer, the first made in America to go to sea. 1828: Board of Longitude is abolished by Act of Parliament 1830: U.S. Navy's Depot of Charts and Instruments (later the U.S. Naval Observatory) founded. 1831: Captain Robert Fitzroy and HMS Beagle begin voyage with 22 chronometers 1834: Nautical Almanacs issued since 1834, all times have been in mean solar time, because by then the time aboard ship was increasingly often determined by marine chronometers. 1837: The first time ball is set up in a Portsmouth, England, shipyard for determining error and rate of chronometers 1837: Thomas Hubbard Sumner publishes A New & Accurate Method of Finding a Ship's Position at Sea by Projection of a Mercator's Chart 1839: African captives aboard the schooner, Amistad revolt against their oppressors. The incident ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1841, the Africans finally win their freedom and passage back home. 1841: Alexander Bain receives the first patent for an electric clock. 1841: Ship Gentleman sails from New York to West Africa with 35 survivors of Amistad 1842: U.S. Navy Lt. Matthew F. Maury charts the direction of winds and ocean currents. 1843: Matthaeus Hipp invents an electric pendulum clock. 1851: Astronomer Sir George Airy builds a Transit Circle at Greenwich Observatory, later adopted as defining line for Greenwich Prime Meridian 1858: American Nautical Almanac is printed without astronomical ephemeris 1864: Charles Hervey Townshend uses a series of lunars to check his chronometer 1866: The United States Hydrographic Office, publisher of nautical books required in navigation established as part of the Bureau of Navigation, Department of the Navy. 1876: Kelvin, England, Tables for Facilitating Sumner Method 1878: Taffrail Log is developed 1883: Standard Railway Time adopted in North America. 1883: Longitude of New Zealand determined by electric telegraph 1884: International Meridian Conference adopts Greenwich as the Prime Meridian defined by the location of the Airy Transit Circle built by Sir George Airy in 1851 1884: Greenwich, England, is designated as the prime meridian by an international conference in Washington, D.C. The 24 time zones are also are codified. 1885: The first, not yet practical, form of gyrocompass is patented by Marinus Gerardus van den Bos 1888: Heinrich Hertz discoveres the directionality of an open loop of wire used as an antenna, forerunner of Radio Direction Finding 1891: Souilagouet, France, Tables du Point Auxiliaire 1897: Guglielmo Marconi, Italian, sends the first ship-to-shore radio signal. 1901: Fuss, Germany, Tables to Find Altitudes and Aximuths 1902: Davis, England, Chronometer Tables 1903: Herman Anschutz-Kaempfe, German, patents the gyrocompass. 1905: Albert Einstein publishes theory of special relativity. 1905: First regular wireless Radio Time Signals from Washington, D.C. 1905: Davis, England, Requisite Tables 1905: Leon Barritt patents Star and Planet Finder (USA 832,527), a much emulated design for future planospheres 1906: Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe invents first usable gyrocompass, after successful tests in 1908 became widely used in the German Imperial Navy. 1907: Elmer Sperry introduced the gyroscopic compass which is unaffected by variation or deviation as it points to true north, not magnetic north 1907: Ball, England, Altitude or Position Line Tables 1907: Lunar Distance tables not longer included in Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris but how to compute them, make your own was 1910: in Boulogne, France, Bellini and Tosi develop one of the earliest successful radio direction finding antenna. Their invention (U.S. Patent # 943,960) made radio finding practical on a wider scale, and was commonly used for aerial navigation from the 1920s until the 1950s. 1910: J.A.D. McCurdy, Canadian, sends the first air-to-ground telegraph message. 1918: Commander Francisco Radler de Aquino, Brazil, Altitude and Azimuth Tables, the Simplest and Readiest in Solution 1913: Longitude distance between France and U.S. fixed by radio time signals. 1913-1914 1913: Lunar Tables are dropped from the British Nautical Almanac 1913: U.S. Power Squadron (USPS) boating association, outgrowth of Boston Yacht Club, is established, later offering courses in piloting and celestial navigation 1914: Blackburne, New Zealand, Excelsior Azimuth & Position Tables 1916: Henry Warren patents the modern electric clock with synchronous motor that runs on house current. 1918: Rust, U.S.A., Tables for Navigators & Aviators 1919: Bertin, France, Tablette de Point Spherique 1919: 1919 Frank Adcock invents the Adcock antenna array consisting of four equidistant vertical elements which can be used to transmit or receive directional radio waves later used in many designs of RDF. 1919: Navy, U.S.A., Simultaneous Altitudes & Azimuths (H.O. 201) 1920: National Bureau of Standards begins broadcasting time on radio station WWV. 1920: Ogura, Japan, New Altitude-Aximuth Tables 1920: Yonemura, Japan, Tables for Altitude & Azimuth 1921: Gilbert T. Rude patents Start Finder and Identifier (patent 1,401,446), a hand-held circular planosphere use by navigators 1921: Davis, England, Altitude-Azimuth Tables 1921: Leonard Bygrave, Surrey England, patents the Bygrave cylinder sight reduction calculator (UK patent 162,895 Accepted May 12, 1921) 1922: Smart, England, Position Line Tables 1923: Navy, U.S.A., Sumner Line of Position (H.O. 203-204) 1924: Braga, Brazil, Taboas de Alturas 1925: Pinto, Portugal, Imprensa Libanio Da Silva 1925: GMT adopts Civil Day convention, day begins at midnight 00AM-12noon-24PM but word "Civil" never added to GMT title 1926: Robert Watson-Watt makes significant improvement to RDF, Huff-duff, which employed both Adcock antenna and oscillioscope to view very short duration transmissions 1926: Goodwin, England, Alpha-Beta-Gamma Tables 1927: Weems, U.S.A., Line of Position Book 1927: Warren Morrison and J.W. Horton make the first quartz clock at Bell Telephone Labs. 1928: H.O. 208 (Navigation Tables for Mariners and Aviators, known as Dreisonstok, 1928, 113pg. 1929: Francis Chichester flies his Gipsy Moth fitted with floats borrowed from the New Zealand Permanent Air Force, completing the first solo flight across the Tasman Sea from East to West (New Zealand to Australia). He was the first to land an aircraft at Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island. 1928 German inventor Paul Kollsman invents the first accurate Barometric Altimeter also called the “Kollsman Window” revolutionizes aviation safety and technology 1930: Pierce, U.S.A. Position Tables (H.O. 209) 1930 Paul Kollsman receives patent (U.S. 1,930,899) for 'Aneroid and Operating Means Therefor', the forerunner of the widely used mechanical aircraft altimeter. 1931: Dead Reckoning Altitude and Azimuth Table by Arthur Ageton, was published, H.O. 211 1931: Gingrich, U.S.A., Aerial & Marine Navigation Tables 1931: P.V.H. Weems, American, Star Altitude Curves 1932: Lorenz Beam developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin, first system to use ultra-short-wave landing radio beacon 1932: Philip Dalton releases the E-6B, originally known as the "Dalton Dead Reckoning Computer", a circular analog slide rule and plotting device used extensively in Air Navigation. 1933: P.V.H. Weems, American, compiles the first Air Almanac, used by aviators to navigate using celestial bodies. 1934: The blind aircraft landing approach navigation system directed aircraft via morse code tones Starting in 1932 by Dr. Ernst Kramar of the Lorenz company 1935: British physicist Robert Watson-Watt produced the first practical radar (radio detection and ranging) system 1936: H.O. 214 (Tables of Computed Altitude and Azimuth, H.D. 486 in the UK, 1936–46, 9 vol. 1936: American Ephemeris no longer includes geocentric Lunar Distance tables 1938: Comrie, England, Hughes' Tables for Sea & Air Navigation 1938: British Navy informally, or UK Royal Navyd, Astronomical Navigation Tables 1938: Navy, U.S.A., Tables of Computed Altitude & Azimuth (H.O. 214) 1939: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan ill fated round-the-world flight are declared dead in abstentia 1940: Volume V of Tables of Comuted Altitude and Azimuth is published as a Works Progress Administration project 1941: Navy, Japan, Celestial Air Navigation Table 1942: Ageton, U.S.A. Manual of Celestial Navigation 1942: Hydrographic Office, Publication no. 351, v. 7, Secret. Celestial Air Navigation Table. 8 Volumes, Tokyo, November 1942. 1942: E. B. Collins patents a modified design of Rude Star Finder (patent 2,304,797 2,304,797 2,337,545 ), a popular hand-held circular planosphere used by navigators and published by U.S. Hydrographic Office 1942: The United States begins building the first Long Range Navigation (LORAN) station. 1943: P.V.H. Weems, Line of Position Book, fourth ed. Annapolis, Md. Weems System of Navigation, 1943 1943: Sonne radio navigation system developed and deployed by Germany during World War II. 1944: Garcia, Spain, Astronomical Position Line Tables 1944: LORAN fully operational. 1945: Consol rotating medium frequency radio beam beacon navigation system (phase shifted) deployed in France, Ireland, Norway, Spain, UK and USA post-war (similar to Sonne) 1945: Benest, England, Astro-Navigation Tables 1945: The U.S. National Bureau of Standards begins transmitting a standard time announcement in telegraphic code on radio station WWV, making precise determination of longitude possible. 1945: "de JoJoost H. Kiewiet de Jonge , Three-star Position Tables for Air Navigation Kiewiet de Jonge, Joost H. ""Three-star Position Tables for Air Navigation."" Reprinted from The Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Vol.5, No.1, January 1952." 1946: Very High Frequency (VHF) Omni-Directional Range (VOR) radio stations are introduced in U.S. for aircraft navigation 1947: Pub. 249 (formerly H.O. 249, Sight Reduction Tables for Air Navigation, A.P. 3270 in the UK, 1947–53, 1+2 volumes) 1947: American firm Kollsman Instrument Co. begins design and production of specialized 'bubble' hand-held and periscope sextants for air-navigators 1949: First atomic clock demonstrated at National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). 1951: H.O. 249 sight reduction tables first published 1953: Charles S. Draper, American, develops the first fully inertial navigation system, which does not depend on outside signals 1953: Sony bought a license for $25,000 from AT&T to manufacture transistors 1955: Table de point miniature (Hauteur et azimut), by R. Doniol, Navigation IFN Vol. III Nº 10, Avril 1955 1957: Russia launches Sputnik satellite, first man-made device to orbit the earth and transmit radio signals 1958: Sony went from being a company with 7 employees to one with 500...and had begun selling what eventually became millions of transistor radios. 1960: U.S. Navy launches program TRANSIT, a navigation system of five satellites providing a fix about once every hour. 1960 c: Seymour Cray, American, develops the first transistorized computer, enabling faster onboard calculations. 1960 c: Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic Office, Washington D.C. contracts IBM to use 1401 computer to compute and automatically type-set (first ever) Sight Reduction Tables for Marine Navigation. 1963: William Polhemus patents Celestial Computer, (patent 3,109,588) a circular slide rule for air-navigators to correct bubble sextant observations for various effects such as motion of body/observer, Coriolis, etc. 1964: Transit, launched by the U.S. Navy, begins offering continuous navigation satellite service. 1966: Radio station WWV began broadcasting shortwave time signals around the world from Fort Collins, Colorado 1967: The second, once a fraction of the solar day, is redefined as atomic time. 1967: U.S. Navy launches program Timation which deployed satellites with very high accuracy clocks in space. 1969: Seiko sells the first quartz watch. 1971: H.O. Pub. No. 229 replaced H.O. Pub. No. 214 for sight reduction. 1971: Busicom LE-120A "HANDY" calculator on a chip, world's first true pocket calculator, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, and also the first calculator with an LED (Light-Emitting Diode) display. 1972: Hewlett Packard introduces HP35 pocket programmable calculator 1972: Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) established. 1972: First leap second is introduced to keep the cumulative difference in UT1-UTC less than 0.9 seconds. 1974: Naval Research Laboratory prepares the atomic clocks for use in space. 1978: The U.S. Air Force launches Block I of the first Global Positioning System satellite system. 1979: Hewlett Packard introduces HP-41C series pocket programmable calculators with optional celestial navigation plugin module 1980: Variant of H.O. 211: Compact Sight Reduction Table, also known as Ageton–Bayless, 1980, 9+ pg. 1980 c: Consol radio navigation system phased out 1981: Sight Reduction Tables for Marine Navigation is published, H.O. 229, as six volumes calculated and typeset by computer 1983: Variant of H.O. 229: Sight Reduction Tables for Small Boat Navigation, known as Schlereth, 1983, 1 volume 1984: The Nautical Almanac Sight Reduction (NASR, originally known as Concise Tables for Sight Reduction or Davies, 1984, 22pg 1985 c: Network Time Protocol (NTP) networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems and receivers provides date and time information attached to digital data. 1989: Magellan Corporation claims to be the first to market in the U.S. with a hand-held navigation device, the Magellan NAV 1000. 1990: Navstar GPS becomes operational. 1990: Fearing military adversaries might use the GPS system to advantage, the U.S. Defense Department deliberately decrease the accuracy of the system, called Selective Availability. 1995: Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation fully operational. 1992: Variant of H.O. 211, S-Table, also known as Pepperday, 1992, 9+ pg. 1997: Sven Yrvind (Lundin) developes the Bris Sextant, a tiny, low-cost, low-technology optical glass or plastic-plate sandwich that yields multiple fixed-interval sun altitude images that can be precisely calibrated. 1998: Nautical Almanac sight reduction method first published in the Nautical Almanac. 1999: Mobile phone manufacturer Benefon launched the first commercially-available GPS phone, a safety phone called the Benefon Esc! 2000: President Bill Clinton orders U.S. Air Force to turn off Selective Availability, thus public get same location precision as military. 2004: First demonstration of a GPS chip. 2004: Qualcomm claims first to develop “assisted GPS”, cellular signal in combination with GPS signal to locate the user to within feet of their actual location. 2015: Rudzinski and Hanno Ix "Ultra compact sight reduction". Ocean Navigator. Portland, ME, USA: Navigator Publishing LLC (227): 42–43. ISSN 0886-0149 Contributions by ---------------- - Edward Popko - Stan Klein - Bob Goethe - Antoine Couëtte - David C - Bill Lionheart Suggestions welcome on these topics (many more to come) ------------------------------------------------------- - First to publish navigation Land-fall/offset method? Francis Chichester? - First use of Greenwich time-ball - Bygrave developed - Astro-compass invented