NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2019 Oct 28, 14:42 -0700
Bill Lionheart you wrote: I expect NavListers will know other studies, especially for
aeronautical bubble sextants?
Bill
I hoped you’d pick this up. You might try looking a AP1234 (1941 Edition) Ch VII paras 19-24, esp Para 22, third sentence.
For a good overall view of the development of median devices and mean averagers you could look at Wright, ‘Most Probable Position’, Ch6, pages 148-168.
You could also look at AJ Hughes ‘The History of Air Navigation’ ChVII, and AJ Hughes ‘The Book of the Sextant for some explanation of the 1930s and 40s sextants.
J.E.D. Williams ‘From Sails to Satellites’ reiterates the teaching in the 1941 edition of AP1234.
Peter Ifland ‘Taking the Stars’, Ch9 has some beautiful photographs and descriptions of the evolution of the aircraft sextant.
Early volumes of the Journal of Navigation will have a lot papers involving maths and techniques, but as it didn’t start being published until around 1947 most of the papers would have assumed the use of the current sextants, which all had mean averagers. DaveP
