NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: UNK
Date: 2010 Jan 12, 14:36 -0800
Charles Poor was my grandfather. Despite that. I will not pretend to have any technical knowledge of his Line of Position Computer.
I spent part of Christmas at the house of a cousin up in Maine. Charles was her great-grandfather. Hanging on one of her walls is an actual Line of Position Computer. I guess it is 15" in diameter, all made of now-tarnished brass and intact except for the cursor. It is inside a picture frame with various labels and such, so one could not operate it. Presumably she received it as a present.
My grandfather was Professor of Celestial Mechanics at Columbia University and certainly was a yachtsman. Clearly Marketing was not on his priority list. I have no clue as to who manufactured them or how many were made and how they were distributed. I hedge here as I am not clear whether it was a commercial enterprise, or perhaps just a "proof of concept" or given to friends or the Navy or what. No clue of niche markets, and unaware of targeting of air navigation.
I can contribute nothing to the navigational aspect of this, my experience limited to a "student grade" sextant my grandfather gave me when I was in junior high school. For the record, "I have never used a sextant for navigation".
Ward Poor
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[Sent from the message boards by: wpoor-AT-tiac.net]
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