NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cotter - copy located
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Sep 10, 18:37 -0700
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Sep 10, 18:37 -0700
There is a copy of Cotter's History of Navigation in the Los Angeles public library in Norwalk. I have read and have tried to work my way through Cotter and have found quite a few errors. What I have found is to get a copy of say, "A Complete Epitome of Practical Navigation" by J.W. Norie 1840 or so or "The Complete Navigator" by Andrew Mackay ( mine is an 1807 American rip-off of a British Edition ) Or maybe something by John Hamilton Moore's "Practical Navigation" ( mine is 1798 although it has several errors and one procedure that is simply wrong ). My books, although old, are not in pristine condition and really did not cost that much, but are very much still readable. Of these books I like Norie's the best. During this period, the 18th to the 20th century, Britain ruled the waves and the British Navy was not just good it was damn good. It follows that when it came to navigation they knew what they were doing and were experts at it. The British books were the best. Most of the American stuff were just British rip-offs. Norie's is very clear, but practical. It does not give you formulas for things, but gives you directions in words. So instead of sin(x) = sin(y)+ cos(z), it would say "take y and z go to table VII or something and extract the sine and cosine of x and y. Add the two quantities together and then return to table VII and extract the inverse that gives the ..." To get the formula you have to piece it together from the directions. The trig is done in an entirely different, but equivalent way that is kind of neat. Norie also has a section on "Longitude by Observation" (Lunar Distance) along with a couple of different methods and several examples. So my idea is get the "who did what when, and what book they wrote or what method they used" from Cotter, but get the nitty gritty pencil and paper methods from some books like Norie or Mackay, the books that the people that actually navigated during that period used. Just my $.02 -- Gordon -- ,,, (. .) +-------------------------ooO-(_)-Ooo------------------------+ | Gordon Talge WB6YKK e-mail: gtalge AT pe DOT net | | Department of Mathematics http://www.nlmusd.k12.ca.us | | Norwalk High School Norwalk, CA | | (o- Debian / GNU / Linux | | //\ The Choice of the GNU Generation | | v_/_ .oooO | | - E Aho Laula - ( ) Oooo. - Wider is Better - | +-------------------------\ (---( )-------------------------+ \_) ) / (_/