Word: sextant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Clinton T. Nash, peacetime stockbroker and wartime executive officer of the Public Relations Section of ComFleets command, his job, his staff, and the tropical island of Tulura constitute the hub of the naval universe. On his desk rests a three-inch shell casing full of paper clips, and a sextant which he tries in vain to sight; over it hangs the sign, "Think Big!" Nicknamed "Marblehead" because he lacks more than hair, Nash affects British knee-length shorts, carries a swagger stick, and talks a strange mixture of adman and old salt ("My hatch is open for ideas...
...both Mediterranean and Pacific campaigns and currently an assistant editor of LIFE, laces in an implausible South Pacific idyl between a Harvard man and a high-bred island girl named Melora. But at novel's end, old Marblehead is back at stage center, having finally mastered his sextant: "Really it's very simple, isn't it ... unlike Public Relations. Why, ∧any meathead could be a seagoing officer...
...Despite all the progress in long-range radio aids to aerial navigation, a good navigator likes best to find where in the world he is by celestial star sights, a process that involves only himself, his sextant and the heavenly bodies. Last week New York's Kollsman Instrument Corp. gave the ancient science of celestial navigation a modern twist, announced a new sextant that, once preset, will seek out the proper star or planet, average a series of sights, and flash its readings by remote control to the navigator. With a three-star fix, he can pinpoint the position...
...Arctic. At the instructor's command, each student climbs the spiral stair that leads to the platform inside the dome. He glances up at the simulated stars and selects the ones he thinks will guide him best. He observes their position with a sextant, just as he would on a real airplane, and hurries back to his desk to figure out his position over the Canadian tundra or the frozen Polar...
...radio sextant, according to Radio-Astronomer Fred Haddock of NRL, is a dish-shaped antenna only three feet in diameter. When the receiver is switched on, it readily picks up the radio waves that come from the sun, and automatically turns to a point in the sun's direction. Then it "locks on," tracking the sun as long as it is above the horizon. The ship's navigator can 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...