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Yes, that is right, I did not follow the conversation until now. I thought the nature of a 'great circle' is common knowledge among you scholars, as it is among nautical and aeronautical navigators. The shortest distance between 2 positions on the earth's surface is part of the great circle going through these positions. It is the equivalence of the straight line in a plane. A long time ago I was thaught spherical goniometrics at my naval academy, which is behind position finding with the sextant. In my blog attached to my site <www.antiquemaps-fair.com> I describe in chapter II of my book 'Dutch Sea charts' the problem of long-distance navigation and the solution Gerhard Mercator found in his projection.

Robert Putman

On 05/05/2011 17:11, [email protected] wrote:
Howard Horowitz

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