NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: 1851 Bowditch
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2003 Jan 31, 16:07 +0000
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2003 Jan 31, 16:07 +0000
Gerard Mittelstaedt wrote: > Copyright is NOT an issue if one works from an original > .. for 2 reasons... time and the fact that it was a US Govt. doc. Just to set the record straight: The 1851 Bowditch was NOT a government publication. The transfer from the Bowditch family to the Hydrographic office happened in 1867. Herbert Prinz P.S. In my modest opinion, the edition from 1851 is of merely historical interest in that it documents the ups and downs (and more so the latter) in the life of this publication. The New American Practical Navigator was never particularly original in contents, but until Nathaniel's death it was at least a good standard reference with solid data tables and up to date descriptions of the latest navigation methods. That changed drastically when Nathaniel died and his son took over the editing. Jonathan Ingersoll Bowditch was clearly overburdened with the task. The 1851 edition is a particularly dull one: It contains no reference to position line navigation. Captain Sumner had published his widely acknowledged method in 1843, with reviews and recommandations from academia and navy alike (Peirce, Maury,...). Sumner's publisher was Thomas Groom & Co, Boston, around the corner from where J. I. Bowditch was sitting in his insurance company. It took 12 years for the hot news to reach Ingersoll or, more likely, for him to live up to the myth that he had created around his father's book. >
