I have also enjoyed this nostalgia trip on sextants. I relate to the stories of taking sights with a sextant and reducing them using Pub No 229. My interest in astronomy and sundials started with celestial navigation. Many years ago I built in my basement shop a wooden sextant that allowed me to measure altitudes to 3 minutes of a degree using a vernier scale. I was thrilled when I reduced my first noon sights even though they placed me several kilometers from my known location. These sights used a mercury blob as an artificial horizon. To use such simple devices to determine where you were in the world was amazing to me. The revelation must have been similar for the ancient Greeks measuring the diameter of the world based on shadows lengths and wells. To then learn spherical trigonometry and use altitude of stars to fix my position further enhanced this special connection to the universe. I have never used this knowledge for anything except the design of sundials. Perhaps this is why sundials hold a special fascination for me. This science is the shadow of that fascinating and much larger body of knowledge that shows who we are from where we are in this universe. Somehow I do not get the same feelings with GPS. Such instruments do not convey the same sense of place. They are like digital watches, very useful and accurate but flashing digits do not convey the same sense of time as a walking shadow or moving hands. I suspect many subscribers to this list have similar feelings. It shows with the world wide response to topics like these. Perhaps we are just showing our age, enjoying our reminiscences of the good old days. Did you know that midshipmen at Annapolis no longer have to learn to use a sextant, not even for lifeboat navigation! It is a brave new world.
Please do not start a thread on slide rules. It would suck me in for sure. My log log K&E also has a special place in my psychic. However I was quite happy to burn my seven place log tables when electronic calculators came along. I even wrote a series of sundial design programs for the early TI 58/59 programable calculators if anyone is interested. Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs 51 N 115 W where I am enjoying a wee dram and feeling my age ;-)
