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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 1985
In this technological age, when an artist of nautical astronomy is fast becoming a figure of history, there is a tendency to regard astro-navigation as something that went out with the dodo. It would be as well to remember, therefore, that despite the widespread use of radio navaids from the early years of World War II, astronomical navigation remained the only world-wide fixing system until the launch of the Transit navigation satellites during the 1960s. The truth is that the first half of the present century saw enormous advances in both its methods and practice and the fact that it is still in wide use can be judged by the large number of Nautical Almanacs sold annually.
1 Norie's Nautical Tables were first published in 1802, Inman's in 1821, and there were many others. The main publications were frequently revised or augmented by additional tables to facilitate new methods. Norie's was completely recast in 1889 and Inman's in 1906 — the edition that was used by the author throughout much of his navigating career!
2 In 1797 Mendoza del Rios presented a paper to the Royal Society describing forty different methods of ‘clearing the distance’ and the following century saw many more. Yet another method by William Hall appeared as late as 1903. Although the data for ‘Lunars’ were no longer included in the Nautical Almanac after 1906, instructions for their reduction were still carried in the 1918 revision of Inman's and even in the 1937 revision of Lecky's Wrinkles.
3 Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 19, No. 3, September 1978, pp. 290–309.Google Scholar
4 HO 214, the American sight-reduction tables, appeared in 1937 but were not in a suitable form for adoption by the NAO. However, the increase in computing facilities that became available during the war led to the introduction of sight-reduction tables for aircraft, HO 249 (= AP 3270) series.