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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: ? ? ? Re: David Thompson's Navigational Technique
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 May 31, 15:34 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 May 31, 15:34 -0600
On 31 May 2004 at 15:23, Fred Hebard wrote: > BTW, I wonder if someone could refresh our memories on Bowditch's > contribution to methods of clearing the lunar distance. Was he one of > the first to present an "approximate" method such as Frank Reed > recently described? The first approximate methods come from Lacaille (1759), Maskelyne (1763), Lyons (1766), and Witchell (1766). Even the last of these predates the birth of Bowditch by 7 years. I don't know if Bowditch contributed an original approximate method himself, but he did translate (with commentary) Laplace's Celestial Mechanics in addition to editing (and later taking authorship of) the American edition of Moore's New Practical Navigator. The translation of Laplace was a mammoth undertaking, not least because of the brevity of Laplace's exposition (Laplace was in the "Bradman class" among mathematical physicists). Ken Muldrew.
