NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Henry Halboth
Date: 2010 Jan 30, 08:36 -0800
To all, Historically speaking the use of symbols, whether Greek or otherwise, for shipboard practical navigation purposes appears rather a matter of individual choice, sophistication, and/or educational background than adherence to a strict convention. Most Astronomical Texts appear to have used Greek letters in their notation, while most English Language Navigation Texts used plain letter abbreviations – see Bowditch, Norie, Mixter, Cugle, et al. I really don’t know what some of the newer texts use – perhaps they seek more sophistication, as there is little new they can otherwise impart. Traditionally, as Jeremy notes, the English speaking MM, and I will add USN, employed plain letter notation throughout with the possible occasional exceptions of Lambda as an abbreviation for Longitude, and Delta for unit change – all said with the caveat of “different ships, different long splices”. It is perhaps also appropriate to state that experienced navigators, accustomed to taking upwards of 200 sights per month, used no notation or forms whatsoever – they simply and instinctively wrote down the various numbers and tabular entries involved and preformed the necessary math. Those interested in historical German navigational notation would do well to reference the Lehrbuch der Navigation, by the Reichs-Marine- Amt, 1906 Ed, available on the Internet, which contains a full table of abbreviations, as well as a wealth of most interesting navigational data for one who reads German; or, the Marinewoerterbuch, by the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine, c.1942, which cross references the abbreviations employed by the major Navies of the world. Regards, Henry
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