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Subject: Re: Classification of the methods for clearing the Lunar Distances
From: Bruce Stark (Stark4677@XXX.XXX)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 13:17:31 EDT
Fred,
Never you mind what that writer in your 1962 Bowditch said about haversines.
Haversines were used by navigators before that fellow's grandfather was born.
It's just that the weren't called "haversines." They were called things like
"logarithms of the horary angle," "log sine square . . .," etc. They saved
two steps in working a time sight. Not every set of navigation tables had
them.
As to Gaussian addition and subtraction logs, I expect you mean the first
proposal for their use in navigation came in the twentieth century. That may
be true. But they were used by mathematicians and astronomers long before
that, as someone pointed out when we were discussing them on the List a while
back.
It's not concern about copyrights that keeps me from putting on the List
things the Navigation Foundation has published. It's appreciation. I spent
way too many years howling in the wilderness not to appreciate being given a
chance to say something in print. The Newsletter also published Robert Eno's
"Field assessment" of the Tables, which gave them credibility in the
navigation community. If Ernest Brown and Capt. Carraway hadn't been there
keeping the Foundation alive, you'd never have heard about the Tables.
But having Herbert Prinz call the Tables "highly original" encouraged me to
try to remember how they came about, and why they turned out the way they
did. I made a start yesterday, but probably won't get around to finishing,
and posting to the List, until next week.
Bruce
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