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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John D. Howard
Date: 2017 Sep 14, 14:32 -0700
David,
I agree with you that in this day and age there is no need to print on paper the almanac.
You said: "I believe that early almanacs gave the sun's RA, dec and EOT once per day (I stand to be corrected). In the early 1950s GHA and dec were tabulated for every hour. That is 24 times as much work for a document that was still being produced by human computers, albeit with the assistance of mechanical tabulating machines."
I think you are about a decade off.
During WW2 both the UK and America had developed electronic, digital computers for code breaking and fire tables for cannons. By 1950 the big mainframes were being sold and were used by banks, schools, and goverement. An ENICAC computer was used for the USA census in 1950. The 1952 presdental election winner was called hours in advance of the polls closing using a digital computer. The programing needed for cannon fire tables is very similar to that needed for almanac data.
I think the almanacs gave more info. because they could.
John H.
