NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Edward J Willis
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2020 Nov 5, 22:41 -0800
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2020 Nov 5, 22:41 -0800
I've skimmed some of his stuff before. I think he was a bit of a nutball, maybe more than a bit -- certainly an eccentric, quite possibly suffering from some mental defect. His writing was just atrocious, and his commentaries on navigation concepts as well as history were frequently plain wrong. Even his description of latitude by noon sight is a shit show.
His "Navigating Machine" was yet another "crazy contraption" --a failure from initial concept through prototype and beyond. But he had family money... so...
Willis was an also-ran. You're wasting your time by paying attention to him.
Frank Reed
