NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Ebay: Navigation School Workbook 1886
From: Willem Piccer
Date: 2006 Mar 23, 21:06 +0100
From: Willem Piccer
Date: 2006 Mar 23, 21:06 +0100
"Seamen have always detested calculations with pencil and paper,
preferring
to use diagrammatic means."
to use diagrammatic means."
Frank Reed you wrote
I consider this seriously unhistorical. Diagramatic methods caught on
VERY
slowly in celestial navigation. There was a significant bias in favor of
calculation (meaning columns of numbers, added and subtracted) in 19th century
navigation.
slowly in celestial navigation. There was a significant bias in favor of
calculation (meaning columns of numbers, added and subtracted) in 19th century
navigation.
As far as I understand the navigator in the early
times used widely diagramatic methods.
The bias in favor of calculation came only after
tables ,like traverse tables were made available to him.Calculations were made
even more easy after the tables of common logarithms had been calculated.This
happened around 1625-1635
What I don't understand: do you mean that there
has been a move back to using diagrams after all these tables were
available?
Thanks
Willem Piccer
