Word: sextants
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Computations by which navigators determine their position from sextant observations of the altitude (elevation above the horizon) and azimuth (true bearing by compass) of heavenly bodies may take up to 15 minutes. In airplanes traveling 200 m.p.h. such computations are out of date by the time they are made. The Navy's Hydrographic Office published tables last year covering latitudes of 30 to 39 degrees, from which navigators could check their position in a few seconds...
...made it clear that much more than simple bad luck was involved. Before the hop-off, when capable Navigator Noonan inspected what he supposed was an ultra-modern "flying laboratory," he was dismayed to discover that there was nothing with which to take celestial bearings except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation. For estimating wind drift over the sea, he obtained two dozen aluminum powder bombs. For some reason these bombs were left behind in a storehouse. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which had been dispatched from...
Navigating was "The Dook," wiry, chaste, non-practicing bridge engineer, whose sober tinkering with the sextant gave their position anywhere from mid-ocean to mid-Australia. Real navigator, says Author Flynn, was Providence. They all took turns at the hand pump, which had to be kept going most of the time. Figuring a couple of months for the trip, they took seven, with many a layover for repairs and beachcombing. Once they made $50 catching kingfish; poker games showed a profit; they poached a sheep, paid for it later out of the fee collected on an opium-runner...
...times decorative, but it is always purposeful. The figureheads usually illustrate the name of the ship, such as the "Abraham Lincoln," or an owner or ship's officer. In any case he was shown complete, from ruffled shirt to whiskers. Again, a stubby little mariner sighting with his sextant advertises the shop of an instrument maker; a "Bell in Hand" proclaims a famous Boston tavern. Thus they all had clarity. And as they were made to be painted in colors, they had directness and simplicity of modeling. Those were qualities which the New England carver understood and his sculpture...
...local magnetism frequently disturbed surveying compasses, he invented a sun-compass, was awarded a medal and $20 in gold by the Franklin Institute. Burt returned from a trip to England in a windjammer to see how well its navigator maintained his course, was thus spurred to invent an equatorial sextant. One of two members of Michigan's early Territorial Legislative Council and later a State Legislator, he was a prime mover in the Sault Sainte Marie Canal project, was generally called "Judge" before he died...