The Nautical Sextant
Title | The Nautical Sextant PDF eBook |
Author | W. J. Morris |
Publisher | |
Pages | 246 |
Release | 2010-10 |
Genre | Reference |
ISBN | 9780939837892 |
The Nautical Sextant reveals in pictures, prose, and perspective the experience and knowledge gained by the author from years of acquiring, studying, and restoring sextants from earlier times and from around the world. This fascinating book owes much of its attraction to the expert description and photos of the mechanics of the sextants and their subassemblies. It is also the story of how different manufacturers, in different times and places, solved the same mechanical problems in different ways in order to perfect one of the most accurate mechanical devices ever produced by man. All of this is complemented by an historical overview to the current day, an overview which has never been published until now. The Nautical Sextant will be of particular value not only to navigators, but also to restorers, collectors, students of technology, curators, and sextant dealers. With its bibliography and extensive use of footnotes, this book will certainly become a classic in its field.
Celestial Navigation in the GPS Age
Title | Celestial Navigation in the GPS Age PDF eBook |
Author | John Karl |
Publisher | Paradise Cay Publications |
Pages | 292 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | Technology & Engineering |
ISBN | 9780939837755 |
Many books on celestial navigation take shortcuts in explaining concepts; incorrect diagrams and discussion are often used for the sake of moving the student along quickly. This book tells the true story-and the whole story. It conveys celestial navigation concepts clearly and in the shortest possible time.It's tailored for navigation in the GPS age-a time of computers, calculators, and web resources. Although it covers all of the traditional methods of 'working a sight, ' the primary thrust is using the (under $10) scientific calculator. By using equations that you key into your calculator, this book guides you toward a better understanding of the concepts of celestial navigation.You will learn novel ways to plot lines of position, ways to check your sextant accurately by star sights, and how to tell what time it is from a moon sight. The many appendices are a treasure of references and explanations of abstract ideas. Celestial Navigation is a crucial skill for the offshore navigator to know, this book provides the shortest path to that knowledge.
American Practical Navigator
Title | American Practical Navigator PDF eBook |
Author | Nathaniel Bowditch |
Publisher | |
Pages | 798 |
Release | 1912 |
Genre | Nautical astronomy |
ISBN |
Taking the Stars
Title | Taking the Stars PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Ifland |
Publisher | Krieger Publishing Company |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 1998 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN |
This text focuses on the history of the development of hand-held celestial navigation instruments, offering descriptions of the tools used. It also includes a glossary of technical terms.
Sextant
Title | Sextant PDF eBook |
Author | David Barrie |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Pages | 386 |
Release | 2014-05-13 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 006227936X |
In the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery—an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world. Since its invention in 1759, a mariner's most prized possession has been the sextant. A navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon, the sextant allowed sailors to pinpoint their exact location at sea. David Barrie chronicles the sextant's development and shows how it not only saved the lives of navigators in wild and dangerous seas, but played a pivotal role in their ability to map the globe. He synthesizes centuries of seafaring history and the daring sailors who have become legend, including James Cook, Matthew Flinders, Robert Fitz-Roy, Frank Worsley of the Endurance, and Joshua Slocum, the redoubtable old "lunarian" and first single-handed-round-the-world yachtsman. He also recounts his own maiden voyage, and insights gleaned from his experiences as a practiced seaman and navigator. Full of heroism, danger, and excitement, told with an infectious sense of wonder, Sextant offers a new look at a masterful achievement that changed the course of history.
Wrinkles in Practical Navigation ...
Title | Wrinkles in Practical Navigation ... PDF eBook |
Author | Squire Thornton Stratford Lecky |
Publisher | |
Pages | 582 |
Release | 1890 |
Genre | Navigation |
ISBN |
Sextants at Greenwich
Title | Sextants at Greenwich PDF eBook |
Author | W. F. J. Mörzer Bruyns |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 2009-06-25 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 0191608904 |
Sextants at Greenwich consists of two main sections: The introductory chapters and the catalogue of navigating instruments of the National Maritime Museum. The first section gives a general overview of the history of celestial navigation with an emphasis on the instruments that were developed and used for that purpose, between about 1450 and the 1970s. The instruments in the catalogue form the main thread in these chapters. The catalogue consists of 347 entries of instruments for celestial navigation, the octants, sextants and related instruments preserved in the National Maritime Museum. Each entry includes the place of the object's origin, its maker, the object's date, inscriptions (by the maker and/or relating to an owner), the graduated scale, the instrument's dimensions and a general description that includes details such as used materials and detached parts. Finally the object's provenance (previous owners and/or users) and references to literature on its history and handling are given.