To: ex-Texan
These methods were never worth a damn. If you're interested in the discovery of an accurate method for determining longitude, a good primer is Longitude by Dava Sobel
7 posted on
01/12/2003 11:54:48 AM PST by
SAMS
8 posted on
01/12/2003 11:57:57 AM PST by
Mo1
(Join the DC Chapter at the Patriots Rally III on 1/18/03)
To: SAMS
LONGITUDE is a fantastic book, and I couldn't put it down..
My Guess is that Captain Rata and Navigator Maui got eaten at New Guinea...
To: SAMS
Longitude is a great book and Harrison was a genius.
Seems to me though, that the astronomy method did give him some good competition. A lot it depended on having good star charts.
Anyway, if anyone's interested, there's also a good book on this subject by Umberto Eco called The island of the Day Before. It's fiction, but he uses a lot of the info that is in this article.
25 posted on
01/12/2003 2:44:35 PM PST by
Arkady
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