NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Top fifty greatest breakthroughs since the wheel
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2013 Oct 25, 17:09 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2013 Oct 25, 17:09 -0400
Frank, Thanks for the interesting reference. I am surprised that the "sextant" made the 23-th place. Above the "alphabetization", "pasteurization", "sailboat" and even "paper money" ! What is sextant for, if you have no sailboat? But I strongly disagree with your statement that "it was scarcely an invention at all". I frequently describe the history of navigation to my friends, mostly mathematicians, and when I describe the technical problem of measuring angles in the sky with 0.2' accuracy from an unstable platform, nobody can figure out how to do this. It was a very clever invention, on my opinion. And nothing better was ever invented since then for the same purpose (measuring an angle from an unstable platform). Alex. > Here's a fun list from "The Atlantic": > http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/ > > Both the compass and the sextant make the cut. Of course, you have to see > the sextant here as a "token" representing scientific navigation. By > itself, it was scarcely an invention at all. > > -FER > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > NavList message boards and member settings: www.fer3.com/NavList > Members may optionally receive posts by email. > To cancel email delivery, send a message to NoMail[at]fer3.com > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > > View and reply to this message: http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=125374 > > >
