NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Bubble sextant development
From: David Pike
Date: 2016 May 2, 13:57 -0700
From: David Pike
Date: 2016 May 2, 13:57 -0700
Debora Warner is very good on the development of US sextants with a fair amount of passing reference to European ones. One fact I did learn from her paper was that Kollsman developed pendulous mirror peri-sextants simultaneously with the bubble variety. I’d always assumed that pendulous mirrors came last, because that’s the order they came with Smiths peri-sextants. I can remember seeing the title of a paper comparing the accuracy of bubble versus pendulous mirror, but now I can’t find it. I think it was in an early ‘Journal of Navigation’. Like they say, never move on until you’ve made a note. DaveP
I have attached a description of the development of aviation sextants. gl