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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Why four cardinal compass points?
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2026 Sep 27, 09:54 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2026 Sep 27, 09:54 -0700
Dave W, you wrote:
"A plane is two dimensional."
Plane? What plane? :) Of course, the "plane" you're talking about is the surface perpendicular to the local gravity vector. So that's a key condition. The gravity vector gives us one very obvious preferred direction. The compass directions are prependicular to it.
And:
"Each dimension has two directions. Works best when orthogonal. QED"
But isn't that a modern mathematics retrospective answer? How do you say "QED" in Old Norse or Old Polynesian a thousand years ago? :)
Frank Reed
