NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Lunars: USNA 1889
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 May 13, 02:13 -0500
I was reading Congressional testimony from the navigation instructor at the
US Naval Academy a few days ago. It's from 1889. A Congressman specifically
asks, "do you teach lunar observations?". The navigation instructor says
(paraphrasing), "no. if they want to learn, they can read the book".
Considering that the two navigation textbooks at the USNA in 1889 (Bowditch
and Coffin) have chapters on this, I was a little surprised. I'm not suprised
that they weren't using lunars at sea in 1889. That much is obvious. I was
surprised that the teaching of them had been abandoned completely. I'm more
convinced than ever that "Chauvenet's method" for clearing lunars, which is the
one in those textbooks, has probably been used more often by navigation
enthusiasts in the past ten years than it ever was in the last ten years of the
nineteenth century by practical navigators.
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
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From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 May 13, 02:13 -0500
I was reading Congressional testimony from the navigation instructor at the
US Naval Academy a few days ago. It's from 1889. A Congressman specifically
asks, "do you teach lunar observations?". The navigation instructor says
(paraphrasing), "no. if they want to learn, they can read the book".
Considering that the two navigation textbooks at the USNA in 1889 (Bowditch
and Coffin) have chapters on this, I was a little surprised. I'm not suprised
that they weren't using lunars at sea in 1889. That much is obvious. I was
surprised that the teaching of them had been abandoned completely. I'm more
convinced than ever that "Chauvenet's method" for clearing lunars, which is the
one in those textbooks, has probably been used more often by navigation
enthusiasts in the past ten years than it ever was in the last ten years of the
nineteenth century by practical navigators.
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com
To unsubscribe, send email to NavList-unsubscribe@fer3.com
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