Greetings, fellow dialists,
I'm still vaguely puzzled to know how Captain Fitzroy of the "Beagle"
made his estimate of the time when faced with 22 chronometers. Taking
the best small number of instruments that closely agreed, perhaps? But
how many to take? Or the mean of all 22? Could the confidence limits of
the mean be calculated at that time? I would doubt if Fitzroy went down
that road.
As to checking the time at sea by lunars, this is a very inaccurate
procedure, only 1/30th as good as clock time.
I thought it interesting that Fitzroy owned as many as five of the
chronometers himself. By the way, my old shipmate tells me that Fitzroy
committed suicide partly because he was a depressive and partly because
of Darwin's 1859 "Origin of Species", but he also says that it was
because of the criticism he suffered as the founder of the new
Meteorological Office. Shame!
Frank 55N 1W.
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