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    Dunraven on lunars
    From: Frank Reed CT
    Date: 2003 Dec 14, 16:44 EST
    I found my copy of that fun quotation from the Earl of Dunraven written in 1908:

       "A lunar is a very foolish but rather fascinating problem. It is foolish in so far as it is of very slight practical value, fascinating because it is a nice problem to work, and because it affords the only means whereby a mariner can, in theory at any rate, ascertain the Greenwich date without knowing his exact Longitude. If he could do so in practice, a Lunar would, Chronometers notwithstanding, be of great value.
       All ships in modern days are well supplied with Chronometers. From them the Greenwich  date is known, and it is as easy to imagine a shipmaster without a head as without a Chronometer."

    This is just a couple of years after the lunars tables had been dropped from the British Nautical Almanac and four years before they were dropped from the American version.

    Frank E. Reed
    [X] Mystic, Connecticut
    [ ] Chicago, Illinois
       
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