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Subject: Re: Preston's paper on Lewis & Clark's Navigation
From: Bruce Stark (Stark4677@XXX.XXX)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 14:39:53 EDT
There's a very confusing statement in my last post. I said something to the
effect that Preston was trying to understand Lewis and Clark data in terms of
twentieth century celestial navigation. That would suggest he was trying to
understand it in terms of lines of position, etc.
Preston was far beyond that. What he hadn't grasped was how navigators of
that era thought about time and longitude.
In most cases, we need accurate Greenwich time before we can work
observations successfully. The old navigators didn't. This is because, from the old
perspective, we've turned things around and put the cart in front of the horse.
Bruce
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