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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: 1421 The year China discovered longitude
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2004 May 9, 10:34 +0100
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2004 May 9, 10:34 +0100
There has been much speculation on this thread about how the Chinese/Greeks could have found longitude using a lunar eclipse - and even doubts if they could have done it at all. A historian would doubtless say that since we have no knowledge of the techniques they used, we cannot speculate on the sort of apparatus they might have used or the accuracy they could have attained in measuring longitude. To do so would be imposing our Western Cultural thinking on a society who did not think like we do or even see the world the same way we do. Well, I am not a historian. I think it would interesting and fun for some members of this list to think about how the ancients might have gone about this and then actually try and measure their relative longitudes using methods developed individually or collectively. I even think it would be interesting enough to write up the endeavor for publication. I don't have an almanac to hand at this time, but it would seem that the next lunar eclipse will occur on 28th October this year at around 03:45 hrs GMT. Anyone else interested? Geoffrey Kolbe