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Tabulating the heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-century England
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UNSPECIFIED (2003) Tabulating the heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-century England. IEEE ANNALS OF THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING, 25 (3). pp. 48-61. ISSN 1058-6180
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The question of how to accurately find longitude at sea was hotly debated in the mid-1700s. This article describes the lunar distance method, promoted by Nevil Maskelyne, the British Astronomer Royal. In 1767, Maskelyne began publishing the Nautical Almanac, which contained astronomical tables prepared by a small network of human computers during the period 1765-1809. This article will describe the computing system Maskelyne created to compute the necessary tables.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Electronic computers. Computer science. Computer software Q Science |
| Journal or Publication Title: | IEEE ANNALS OF THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING |
| Publisher: | IEEE COMPUTER SOC |
| ISSN: | 1058-6180 |
| Date: | July 2003 |
| Volume: | 25 |
| Number: | 3 |
| Number of Pages: | 14 |
| Page Range: | pp. 48-61 |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| URI: | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/9407 |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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