Abstract
THERE are many circumstances connected with actual navigation which tend to make calculation on board ship difficult to the inexpert, and we naturally welcome any effort intended to shorten an onerous task and to introduce greater simplicity. The substitution of tables which give an approximate solution of a spherical triangle, involving only a very easy interpolation, is the form that assistance usually takes, and the main feature in the book before us is to make tables, already published, available for wider limits of latitude and declination. As tables extend, and contrive, perhaps, to serve more than one purpose, complications are likely to arise, and however great an ingenuity is displayed in adapting trigonometrical for mulae to tabular arrangement, if simplicity is sacrificed to ingenuity, the ultimate gain is questionable.
Altitude Tables, computed for Intervals of Four Minutes between the Parallels of Latitude 24° and 60°, and Parallels of Declination 24° and 60°, designed for the Determination of the Position Line at all Hour Angles without Logarithmic Computation.
By Frederic Ball. Pp. xxxvii + 313. (London: J. D. Potter, 1909.) Price 15s. net.
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Altitude Tables, computed for Intervals of Four Minutes between the Parallels of Latitude 24° and 60°, and Parallels of Declination 24° and 60°, designed for the Determination of the Position Line at all Hour Angles without Logarithmic Computation . Nature 81, 4 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081004a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081004a0