NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Lars Bergman
Date: 2020 Jul 2, 13:16 -0700
Dave C asked recently about Burton's Nautical Tables. I do not know much about Burton himself, but I have a textbook by S.M.Burton "The Art of Astronomical Navigation", from 1955, second edition 1962. This book first appeared in 1935 under the title of "A Manual of Modern Navigation". I have used Burton's tables for the last forty years and like it. It has a clear layout and is made primarily for sight reduction using the cosine-haversine method for altitude and ABC-tables for azimuth. It of course also contains traverse tables and other commonly used tables. For the history of the tables, refer to enclosed file, "The Gestation and Birth of my Nautical Tables" which appeared in the (British) Journal of Navigation, vol. 15, no. 4, in 1962.
Lars
