Word: sextant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...supported by hidden microphones. It can also be candid if it is simply turned on and left running until the people who are being photographed get bored and go about their business as if the camera were not there. This technique has been used by Manhattan's Sextant Inc. to make one of the most expensive and unusual documentary TV shows ever done. It is called Inside the Movie Kingdom-1964 and is scheduled to be broadcast this week on NBC (Friday, March 20, 9:30-11 E.S.T...
Clinging Twilight. The basic navigation tool is still the time-honored sextant, with which a navigator shoots the stars (or planets, sun or moon) to fix his plane's position above the surface of the spinning earth. Sextants have been vastly improved since the days of sailing ships, and a competent navigator can make a fix that is accurate to within ten miles. If weather permits, he takes about five fixes during a transatlantic crossing...
...receiving equipment. Probably the first to get such equipment will be the nuclear submarines. When they poke a whip antenna above the surface to listen to Transit they will be able to tell where they are within 600 ft. A navigator who shoots the sun or stars with a sextant in good weather does an excellent job if he gets a fix that is accurate within one and a half miles...
...compass, the chronometer, the sextant gradually changed navigation from an art to a 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...