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On Sunday, January 18, 2004, at 04:19 PM, Frank Reed wrote:

> When did the New take over decisively from the Old?

Interesting question.  Early editions of Bowditch's American Practical
Navigator had separate chapters entitled  "Latitude" and "Longitude".
I was just musing over this the other day, so it is interesting that
you give as a distinction between the Old school and the New school
that Old school looks at the determination of these as separate
activities.

Well, all editions of Bowditch from the 1800s have separate chapters on
Latitude and Longitude.  All editions of Bowditch from the early 1900s
also continue to have separate chapters on Latitude and Longitude.  My
last edition where these chapters still exist is a 1943 edition.

The edition that made the big switch is the 1958 edition of Bowditch,
which in many respects happens to be my very favorite edition of all
time.  It appears that sometime post WWII the New school was firmly
entrenched enough that when they did the big revision of Bowditch for
the 1958 edition they no longer have chapters named "Latitude" and
"Longitude".  Instead there is simply a chapter named "Sight Reduction"
where it is all rolled into one activity.

Publications usually follow practice by a period of time, so the switch
in practice probably happened during WWII and they didn't have the time
to update Bowditch during the war.  Do we have any veterans of the war
on the list that can comment on the practices at sea during the war?
Were they St. Hilaire's based or Old school?

My collection has a gap between the 1943 and 1958 Bowditch editions.
Do any of our list members have an edition of Bowditch published after
1943 and before 1958?  I have never seen or heard of one.  I'd like to
know since this was one of the big gaps in my collection.  Another big
gap is from 1888 until 1917, but I digress...

Dan

   

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