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Early Pole Star Tables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

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I cannot subscribe to Dr. Freiesleben's thesis that until the French Revolution induced a change of mind there was a big gap between men of science and seamen. It may be, as he states, that ‘in the eighteenth century there was still a remarkable gap between scientific doctrine and practice’ and it would be interesting to know the causes if this were so, but in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was, particularly in England, a quite remarkable and organized liaison between scientists and seamen with the specific purpose of improving the art of navigation. The object, as Thomas Digges expressed it in 1579, was ‘to reduce Imaginative Contemplations to Practical Conclusions’; in other words, it was to make scientific discoveries and inventions to improve the accuracy of navigation. A few examples must suffice in the space available to support this statement.

Type
Forum
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1955

References

REFERENCES

1Freiesleben, H. C. (1955). Early pole star tables. This Journal (Forum), 8, 285.Google Scholar
2Digges, T.An Arhhmeticall Militare Treatise called Stratioticos (London, 1579).Google Scholar
3Taylor, E. G. R. (Ed.) (1932). A Brief Summe of Geographic, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 69, XV, London.Google Scholar
4Perkins, P.The Seamans Tutor, London, 1682.Google Scholar
5Eden, R. ‘The Description of the Two Viages into Guinea’, in The Decades of the New Worlde, London, 1955.Google Scholar