Word: sextant
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Another demonstration of infra-red use occurred last week on the roof of England's Croydon Airdrome control tower. There Paul Humphrey MacNeil of Huntington, L. I. showed his infra-red sextant. Navigators locate their position at sea or in the air by determining how high the sun is above the horizon. They "shoot the sun" through the eyepiece of a sextant. If the day is cloudy, they cannot see the sun, although they may know its approximate location. The MacNeil sextant is connected with an amplifier sensitive to the sun's infra-red rays. Those rays...
Busier than Pilot Post as the Winnie Mac streaked over the water was Harold Gatty. Cramped into a tiny space behind a wall of special fuel tanks he alternately poked his sextant through a port in the roof, scribbled his computations, passed written directions to the pilot, and pumped gasoline up into the wing tanks. Hard work, but nothing compared to the ordeal of last summer when he and Harold Bromley got i.200 mi. from Japan in an attempt flight to the U. S. and then had to fight their way back to shore with a broken exhaust ring spewing...
...California and laugh it off. Tireless investigation has uncovered a new but reliable formula which may solve the problem. Climb Lowell House Tower and tap base bell with weather vane (unobtrusively removed from Dunster House at high noon three days before). Number of echoes indicates proper month. Using standard sextant, determine latitude and longitude. Look at watch to find time of day. Multiply sum of these results by the height in rods of new Chapel Tower. By the time this is done, spring will be over and the matter may safely be dropped...
...transport pilot, took off from New York last week for Bermuda, Azores, Paris. Instead of a radio the plane carried a small cargo of advertised foodstuffs for "the first payload flight to Europe." In "rocking" the plane off the still water the flyers knocked to the floor their sextant - only navigating instrument aboard - but instead of turning back they elected to guess their course. Navigator MacLaren guessed right at first, picked up two steamers about halfway; guessed wrong thereafter and turned back to safety at Norfolk...
...pointed crazily to East and West. Beside him stolid Dutch Evert Van Dyk held the controls, stared straight ahead. In the cabin behind him Radioman John Stannage frantically worked key and dials. Navigator J. Patrick Saul searched in vain for a patch of sky that he might fix his sextant to a star. Now their latest radio bearing showed them 175 miles east of the Cape, when they had thought it only 75 miles...