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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Accuracy of Lewis and Clark Observations
From: Bill Noyce
Date: 2002 Aug 5, 08:52 -0400
From: Bill Noyce
Date: 2002 Aug 5, 08:52 -0400
George Huxtable asks:
> 1. Page 169. Preston states that one of the instruments carried by the
> expedition was a chronometer, but there seems to be no mention of
> chronometer-timed observations. Did the chronometer fail?
Apparently the chronometer(s) were allowed to run down on several
occasions. Even so, you would expect it/them to be useful for
determining the change in longitude from one day to the next, with
dead reckoning to cover the intervals where it lost time.
One interesting web site about Lewis and Clark is
http://www.lewis-clark.org/MAPTERRINCOG/nav_mtimm.htm
-- Bill
