Throughout all time the big question has been and continues to be: Where the hell am I?
Adam said, “Where are you going, Eve?”
Eve shook her blonde hair and said, “Damn if I know, Adam. I’m bored of this place.”
“Well stay here if you don’t know where you’re going. You could get lost.”
Adam sat on a rock and waited for her answer.
Eva said, “I won’t get lost, Adam. Besides, I’m not a man. If I get lost, I’ll ask for directions.”
Adam said, “You must have some idea where you want to go, Eve. You can’t just go dark and gloomy world.
She looked at Adam with her pale blue eyes and said, “I was thinking more about Paris than about him. dark and gloomy world.
In those days, people tried to keep track of where they were looking at the stars. The great explorer, Phendom, used the stars to navigate. In 45678 BC, on his first voyage to Greenland, his chief navigator, Sogbottom, said, “I think we’d better go back north, Phendom. I think it’s the Southern Cross.”
I found only one reference to Phendom on Google.com. That’s how unknown it is. The reference was cached, but always loving Google.com said it could read the text if it wanted to. I decided to do that until one of those little boxes appeared and told me that I would have to install the Korean language module to read it.
This is how I learned that Phendom, who was probably the first Sea Explorer, was Korean.
I still remember three words in Korean from my days in the Korean War. I can say, “How are you? (Awnyahasiminiga)”. I can say, “Come here”, to a man (erioseeo). And I can call a dog (ereereereere, etc.). It is better in Korea not to confuse the last two. Koreans like to throw stones.
Back to the stars: if you measure the angle from the horizon to Polaris, you will know your latitude. Polaris is the “pole star”. You may know it as the “North Star”. To find Polaris, look for the big saucepan. If you can’t find the Big Dipper, you are facing the “W”, which is also known as Cassiopeia. To see how all of this is done, go to: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_kids/AskKids/northstar.shtml
You can see why I love Google.com. “I love those goo goo googlely eyes!” You can try: http://pub2.bravenet.com/forum/167551711/show/337617 to learn more about Barney Google with the goo goo googlely eyes! “
Be sure to stop by to see Barney in person on Google at: http://www.toonopedia.com/google.htm. you will be happy you did.
At this point, it would be appropriate to discuss how the early navigators determined longitude. Damn if I know how they did it. I know that Captain James 1768-1780 AD was the first to use a stopwatch to determine longitude. It says so at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_exploration.
The stopwatch will put us in a flimsy situation like the sextant would. Let’s go.
(I made up the word flimsy because it’s just what we needed in that last sentence, right? You won’t find it in your dictionary or on Google.com. You must be excited to read the writings of a modern creative literary genius.)
There is no reason to rush into length and stopwatch.
Skipping history, boaters today have various ways of finding their way home. A few years ago a friend told me that he had bought a fishing boat at a sheriff’s auction for $ 800.00. He was very excited about that boat and so was I. He put a new V-8 on the boat and we went fishing in the Delaware Bay, God’s great gift to passionate fishermen.
My son and son-in-law joined us and we had a fish boodle. Towards night, I raised my hand to measure the height of the sun and said, “In 40 minutes it will be dark. We better get inside.”
Well, nobody wanted to stop fishing and my friend assured me that we could go in looking for the navigational light at the mouth of the Maurice River. We would follow the light and glide upriver to the dock.
Finally, when the sun sank into the abyss of space-time, my friend decided it was time to go. He started the engine, but the boat did not move. Peeking out to see what was below deck, we found water. The boat had such a tonnage of water that it did not move.
My friend had installed a pump, so he turned it on. That didn’t help, so we started getting the water out. Finally, we got the boat started.
I suggested we put on our life jackets. The Delaware is full of ugly tankers and freighters and whatnot. I could see us in the water yelling at the top of our lungs, HELP!
We headed east but couldn’t see the goddamn navigational light. We moved south and finally got to see it. We drove upriver at a slow pace because the river docks had signs that said: DO NOT WAKE UP!
We moved slower and slower as we drank more water. The mosquitoes got thicker and thicker. We thought we were with Bogey in the African queen.
We finally made it to the dock. That’s where we found out that we couldn’t move to the dock because the ship wasn’t heading properly. Then, luckily, on attempt 70, we made it to the pier.
I grabbed two five-gallon cans of fish and ran to my Volkswagen bus, with ten trillion mosquitoes helping me.
The next morning my friend went down to the dock to check out his bargain ship.
At first he couldn’t see it.
Then he discovered that he was only a few feet away.
Unfortunately the address was wrong!
Glub, glub!
Sorry for that big deviation from our very serious discussion about navigation and all.
Some time after the compound was discovered, man discovered radio navigation. Transmitters along the shoreline sent out a distinctive beep that ships could triangulate or recognize to find their way home. We learn the following at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_navigation
“The first radionavigation system was the radio direction finder, or RDF. By tuning into a radio station and then using a directional antenna to find the direction to the transmitting antenna, radio sources replaced the stars and planets of celestial navigation with a system that could be used in any weather and at any time of day. Taking two of these measurements and plotting the directions on a map will result in an intersection, your current location. Commercial AM radio stations can be used for this task because of its long range and high power, but low power radio beacon strings were also installed specifically for this task. Early systems used a loop antenna that was turned by hand to find the angle of the signal, while modern systems they use a much more directional solenoid that is quickly turned by a motor, with the electronics calculating the angle. “
Placing transmitters on global positioning satellites solved all of our navigation problems except during intense sunspot activity or overly active solar winds.
The end
copyright © John T. Jones, Ph.D. 2005
