NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Maskelyne et al
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Jun 11, 19:42 +0100
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Jun 11, 19:42 +0100
To my statement about the lunar-distance method having been chosen by Maskelyne, Fred Hebard quibbled- >Just to quibble that Mayer was also instrumental in instituting lunars. > It wasn't only Maskelyne. It's a fair quibble, Fred. Maskelyne put lunar distances into a form which could be used in practice by mariners at sea. It wasn't an easy process, but it involved precomputed tables, which made it far easier than what had to be done before. That was Maskelyne's achievement, but it depended on an accurate theoretical basis for the position of the Moon. Mayer provided that, and showed how Maskelyne's human-computers could work out future Moon positions. Without Mayer's work, Maskelyne's method would not have been accurate enough for mariners to use at sea. Mayer's contribution was vital, and should be recognised. But Meyer's theory itself was based on many years of Moon observations, many from Halley. And Mayer's theory was a development from Euler, a Swiss, and his went back to Newton and Leibnitz. And their data came from Kepler and Tycho. As for lunars, we should remember the French, who were the first to offer predicted lunar distances (though not very usefully, being at 12-hour intervals) in their "Connaissance des Temps": the first voyage to try out lunars was made by LaCaille as early as 1751, without benefit of any precomputed tables. The man who knows most about the period on this list is Steven Wepster, who has written a dissertation on Mayer, and I hope he will correct anything I have got wrong. Each of these workers built on foundations provided by his predecessors, and helped by his contemporaries. This was a period when European nations were fighting colonial wars, mainly in North America, though Western Europe itself was relatively placid, apart from some Anglo-Dutch squabbles. Still, civilised communication prevailed between the 'savants' of the time; it's a lesson to us all. George. ================================================================ contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. ================================================================