Word: loran
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...science, made mere curiosities of such seafaring geniuses as the early Polynesians-who, according to legend, could smell land far beyond the horizon and head their boats accordingly. In 1960, man's most accurate substitute for weather-dependent celestial navigation is World War II's loran (for long-range aid to navigation), a system of cross-monitored radio signals that is highly expensive and covers only the more frequently traveled parts of the earth. Last week loran seemed destined for obsolescence, as an experimental Navy satellite called Transit I-B blasted into space from Florida's Cape...
...contributed more than money. War-developed sonar made depth measurements far more sensitive, giving oceanographers a more accurate look at the ocean's bottom than they had ever had before. The new loran, which can fix a ship's position within a quarter of a mile in daylight, night, or in the thickest fog, enabled a far more detailed and accurate study of ocean currents, and oceanographers launched zealously into new studies with their new tools...
Deep & Narrow. Before the war, even such well-known currents had not been thoroughly mapped in detail. For Woods Hole oceanographers, the first order of business was a new study of the great Gulf Stream, which exports tropical water to northern Europe. With the aid of loran, the new Atlantis surveys proved that it is not a wide, steady stream, but a jet that whips from side to side over hundreds of miles and sometimes curls into eddies. It may run fast or slow or backward, and only the general sum of its motion carries warm water to Europe...
...find his position just as if he had an assistant watching the sun through an ordinary optical sextant. No cloudy weather gets in the way of the radio sextant, nor can an enemy jam the radio impluses (as is possible with other radio aids to navigation, such as Loran...
...from a moving boat at sea is slowly being solved by some new, and fanciful instruments. One, the bathythermograph, measures the temperature continuously as it is towed behind the ship. The sharp temperature variation between the Gulf Stream and the surrounding water supplies the club to the Stream, while LORAN (Long Range Radar Navigation) solves the difficult problem of giving the ship's exact location...