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"A Short History of Navigation" by Branch and Brook-Williams and published 
by Weems System of Navigation in 1942.

At 91 pages it is short but very comprehensive and at times, written with 
typically British dry humour which makes for a delightful read.

Robert
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Huxtable" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2006 3:09 PM
Subject: [NavList 601] Re: Is Navigation mailing list finished?



Guy Schwartz asked, about Nav-l-

"Tried sending a message and it was bounced back."
As for nav-l, wish I knew more about what's happened, and happening.

and-
"Is there a book that deals with the history of celestial navigation?"

Yes, there are are a few books that deal with the topic of the history
of celestial navigation. Or astro-navigation, as it's usually referred
to this side of the Atlantic. All that I know of are by British
authors, post-war, but not very recent, and all out of print. There
are others, in other languages, that I can't evaluate. If anyone can
suggest any American texts, that would be of interest.

Best, but with severe reservations, is Charles H Cotter, "History of
Nautical Astronomy", 1968. Best, because he isn't shy about getting
into the maths. Reservations, because he gets so much wrong
(especially in the maths). Secondhand, Cotter is hard to find,
nowadays, and getting rather expensive; if you can discover a copy on
Abebooks or Amazon at less than �60 ($100, say), you are doing well.
If you have a copy, I recommend that it's useful to tuck inside it a
list of known and suspected errors, compiled by Jan Kalivoda and me,
with help from Herbert Prinz. This can be downloaded from-
 http://www.huxtable.u-net.com/cotter01.htm  It's very likely there
are further errors, as yet undiscovered, and if any are found or
suspected, I would like to be informed.

Others, which deal with celestial navigation as part of the general
history of navigation, are-

W E May, "A history of marine navigation", 1973. Comprehensive, quite
well illustrated, but avoids numbers and equations.

J B Hewson, "A history of the practice of navigation", editions from
1951 to 1983. Not so well illustrated, and in my view not so
authoritative, but pretty reliable.

There are several texts, one by Waters, several by E G R Taylor, which
deal with earlier periods in the history of navigation, but which
don't get into the 19th century stuff when our modern methods of
navigating were formed, so are less relevant to modern mariners. I can
list them if anyone wants to know.

It would be interesting to see what books others recommend.

George.

contact George Huxtable at george@huxtable.u-net.com
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.





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