NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Star-star distances for arc error
From: Douglas Denny
Date: 2009 Jun 29, 09:11 -0700
From: Douglas Denny
Date: 2009 Jun 29, 09:11 -0700
I should have also commented: I would dearly like to get my hands on a real Bygrave slide rule or the German equivalent to play with and try it 'for real'; (hands covered in white gloves to preserve it of course). I have only seen one example and that was in the Aviation museuum in Hendon. It looked in poor condition too. From a programme supplied by Dr. Kolbe I made one with a cardboard tube and a sliding clear outer ("cos") scale just to try the operations for the fun of it. It proves the principle but is near impossible to use as the two scales become so confusing one on top of the other. I have not yet tried using different colours for the different scales to see if it is then possible to use it more successfully. Interesting to speculate if Mr. Bygrave tried this and rejected it as being impracticable, reverting to the separated scales of a conventional cylindrical slide rule and movable cursor to reduce confusion possibilities. Probably not. What I do wonder is what happened to all these Bygrave slide rules - and the German ones? There must have been hundreds made and yet now they are incredibly rare it seems. The Air Ministry must have had boxes full of them somehwere on the shelves of some nondescript warehouse in teh middle of nowhere. It is nice to contemplate that perhaps they are still there? ... ...though much more likely thrown out by some idiot who was following orders to throw away "that rubbish over there on the shelves released from the Air Ministry inventory as uselss and obsolete! Vandals! Douglas Denny. Chichester. England. Douglas Denny. Chichester. England. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---