The Instrumental Ideal

Extract

If astronomical navigation can be made to give its results in as simple a manner and as quickly as do the modern electronic systems, then clearly it can provide an aid whose usefulness will remain undisputed. The aim, then, should be to develop a system of astro-navigation which will give an immediate and continuous reading of, for instance, latitude and longitude; and it seems quite possible at the moment to envisage the nature of such a system. Its realization is perhaps another matter; and this may take time that perhaps the development of other systems will render ill-spent.

The ideas put forward in this paper are only concerned with the fundamentals of what, in the writer's opinion, is a possible solution to the problem; they are also not all new.