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George, you wrote:
"Frank mentions "precision  naked-eye observatories". But that in itself is
somewhat  contradictory."

Tycho's observations were accurate to around 1 or 2  minutes of arc. That's
what I mean by a "precision naked-eye observatory". Tycho  was a singular
exception in Europe at this time. Why? Clearly it wasn't a  technological issue. It
was a conceptual problem. The idea of simultaneous  observation simply didn't
occur to Baffin or any of his contemporaries. Or if it  did, they couldn't
convince anyone else to fund the  project.

And:
"Another difficulty that affected observatories was the  lack of proper
clocks, until Huyghens invented pendulum clocks."

Both  local sidereal time and local apparent time are observable parameters.

And you wrote:
"And precise calculation was impossible until the laws  controlling the
planet's motions were understood, which had to wait for  Newton."

No Newtonian calculations are required here. If the goal is  MAPPING, then
you don't need the ability to predict the positions of the Moon  and other
celestial bodies. You observe them in two longitudes and compare  later.

And you summed up:
"So Frank is telescoping more than a  century of scientific and technical
achievement into nothing, with that "what  if"!

Nope. There's no question that the tools and techniques were  available in
Baffin's time. But there was no one with the insight to apply them  to the task.

-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N  72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars

   

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