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From: Frank Reed (no email)
Date: Sat Dec 10 2005 - 20:58:21 EST
George, you wrote:
"Frank mentions "precision naked-eye observatories". But that in itself is
somewhat contradictory."
Tycho's observations were accurate to around 1 or 2 minutes of arc. That's
what I mean by a "precision naked-eye observatory". Tycho was a singular
exception in Europe at this time. Why? Clearly it wasn't a technological issue. It
was a conceptual problem. The idea of simultaneous observation simply didn't
occur to Baffin or any of his contemporaries. Or if it did, they couldn't
convince anyone else to fund the project.
And:
"Another difficulty that affected observatories was the lack of proper
clocks, until Huyghens invented pendulum clocks."
Both local sidereal time and local apparent time are observable parameters.
And you wrote:
"And precise calculation was impossible until the laws controlling the
planet's motions were understood, which had to wait for Newton."
No Newtonian calculations are required here. If the goal is MAPPING, then
you don't need the ability to predict the positions of the Moon and other
celestial bodies. You observe them in two longitudes and compare later.
And you summed up:
"So Frank is telescoping more than a century of scientific and technical
achievement into nothing, with that "what if"!
Nope. There's no question that the tools and techniques were available in
Baffin's time. But there was no one with the insight to apply them to the task.
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
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