The best navigation systems are up-to-date and feature detailed information such as which lanes to use and the points of interest that are nearby. You'll want a model that is large enough to clearly see, but not one that interferes with your view of the road. In 2018, Lao PDR suffered its most costly floods in a decade. To identify the priority needs following the floods, GFDRR and the World Bank worked closely with the United Nations, the European Union, and civil society organisations to conduct a government-led Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA).
Written By:
Navigation, science of directing a craft by determining its position, course, and distance traveled. Navigation is concerned with finding the way to the desired destination, avoiding collisions, conserving fuel, and meeting schedules.
Lebanon: Navigation and seafaring
Essential for the establishment of commercial supremacy was the Phoenician skill in navigation and seafaring. The Phoenicians are credited…
Navigation is derived from the Latin navis (“ship”) and agere (“to drive”). Early mariners who embarked on voyages of exploration gradually developed systematic methods of observing and recording their position, the distances and directions they traveled, the currents of wind and water, and the hazards and havens they encountered. The facts accumulated in their journals made it possible for them to find their way home and for them or their successors to repeat and extend their exploits. Each successful landfall became a signpost along a route that could be retraced and integrated into a growing body of reliable information.
For these pathfinders, the danger of running into another vessel was negligible, but, as traffic expanded along established routes, collision avoidance became a concern. Emphasis shifted from finding the way to maintaining safe distances between craft moving in various directions at different speeds. Larger ships are easier to see but require more time to change speed or direction. When many ships are in a small area, an evasive action taken to avoid a collision may endanger other ships. This problem has been alleviated near busy seaports by confining incoming and outgoing ships to separate lanes, which are clearly marked and divided by the greatest practical distance. Airplanes travel so fast that, even though two pilots may see one another in time to initiate evasive action, their maneuvers may be nullified if either one incorrectly predicts the other’s move. Ground-based air traffic controllers are charged with the responsibility for assigning aircraft to selected paths that minimize the likelihood of collision. Civil air navigation is profoundly influenced by the requirements of following the instructions of these controllers.
The advent of steam-powered ships during the first half of the 19th century added the problem of minimizing fuel consumption to the navigator’s duties. In particular, beyond a certain safety factor, carrying excess fuel needlessly reduces cargo capacity.
Facts Matter. Support the truth and unlock all of Britannica’s content. Start Your Free Trial Today
Adherence to a predetermined schedule, a matter of vital importance in space navigation in connection with fuel consumption, has become important in sea and air navigation for a different reason. Today each voyage or flight is a single link in a coordinated network of transport that carries people and goods from any starting place to any chosen destination. The efficient operation of the whole system depends upon assurance that each journey will begin and end at the specified times.
Modern navigation, in short, has to do with a globally integrated transportation system in which each voyage from start to finish is concerned with four basic objectives: staying on course, avoiding collisions, minimizing fuel consumption, and conforming to an established timetable.
Edward W. Anderson
Development of marine navigation
The earliest navigators probably learned to steer their ships between distant ports by familiarizing themselves with the sequences of intervening landmarks. This everyday visual approach to navigation is called piloting. Keeping these reference points in view required that they stay quite close to shore, but they made the transition to ocean voyages well out of sight of land thousands of years ago in various parts of the world. Regular trade was carried on between the island of Crete and Egypt, a distance of approximately 300 miles (500 km), more than 25 centuries before the Christian era. A passage in the Odyssey describes such a voyage from Crete: running before a north wind, sailing ships reached the mouth of the Nile in five days. Longer and longer routes became established by later sailors. By 600 bc the Phoenicians were routinely importing tin from Cornwall in the British Isles. Well before the 10th century ad, Irish seafarers successively reached the Shetland Islands, the Faeroe Islands, and Iceland, crossing 200 to 300 miles (300 to 500 km) of the North Atlantic at each stage. The Vikings repeated those passages and ventured even farther, settling Greenland and visiting North America. By about ad 400, Polynesian navigators had reached Hawaii from the Marquesas Islands, 2,300 miles (3,700 km) across the open Pacific.
Direction finding
The details of how these voyagers found their way are not known, but the use of the Sun and stars as guides is mentioned in many sources, including the works of Homer and Herodotus, the Bible, and the Norse sagas.
East and west are traditionally synonymous with the directions of sunrise and sunset; north and south are determined by the directions of shadows cast by the noonday Sun. By night the stars rise in the east and set in the west, and in the Northern Hemisphere their apparent rotation around the Pole Star due to the Earth’s rotation has long been a fact of the navigator’s life.
For many centuries practical navigators oriented themselves by relying just as strongly on meteorological clues (the directions from which steady winds blew) as on astronomical ones (the positions and apparent motions of the Sun and stars). The Mediterranean sailor could confidently distinguish the cold north wind from the warm south wind. Names were assigned to eight principal winds, and the directions of these winds became the eight equally spaced points of the wind rose (rosa ventorum) of the Classical mariner. The wind rose may have been devised by the Etruscans, whose power reached its peak around the 6th century bc; it certainly antedates the octagonal Tower of the Winds built in Athens by Andronicus of Cyrrhus about 100 bc. From Roman times through the Middle Ages, an alternative 12-point wind rose was used by some navigators, but it was discarded in the 15th century when the Portuguese, at the opening of the great age of discovery, subdivided the eight points of the ancients and introduced a 16-point system.
Sailing instructions
The first written aid to coastal navigation was the pilot book, or periplus, in which the courses to be steered between ports were set forth in terms of wind directions. These books, of which examples survive from the 4th century bc, described routes, headlands, landmarks, anchorages, currents, and port entrances. No doubt the same information had formerly been passed along by word of mouth, as it still is in some parts of the world. It seems improbable that any sort of sea chart was used with these sailing guides, even though Herodotus’s map of the known world, drawn in the 5th century bc, delineated the Mediterranean shoreline quite accurately. Reliable sea charts were not introduced until the advent of the magnetic compass and of methods for determining latitude and longitude.
Distance and speed measurements
Distances were cited in the early pilot books in units of a day’s sail. Later, distances were deduced from estimates of the ship’s speed and the lengths of time over which these speeds were maintained. Probably the oldest method of determining the speed is the so-called Dutchman’s log, in which a floating object, the log, was dropped overboard from the bow of the ship; the time elapsing before it passed the stern was counted off by the navigator, who kept it in sight while walking the length of the vessel. This technique was eventually replaced by that in which the log, attached to a reel of light line, was dropped from the stern; as the ship moved away from the log, the length of line paid out during the emptying of a sandglass was the measure of the speed.
In Seaman’s Practice (1637) the English navigator Richard Norwood recommended the use of a line knotted at intervals of 50 feet (15 metres) and a 30-second sandglass; knotted intervals of 47 to 48 feet (14.3 to 14.6 metres) and a 28-second sandglass were later adopted to accord with nautical miles of slightly different lengths. In the United Kingdom a nautical mile is defined as 6,080 feet (1,853 metres). In 1953 the United States switched from the English standard to the metric, or international, standard of 1,852 metres (6,076 feet). With the international standard nautical mile, knots were spaced about 14.4 metres (approximately 47.25 feet) along the rope. If the first knot appeared as the sand ran out, the ship’s speed was 1,852 metres per hour—one nautical mile per hour, or one knot.
As early as 1688 an English instrument maker, Humphry Cole, invented the so-called patent log, in which a vaned rotor was towed from the stern, and its revolutions were counted on a register. Logs of this kind did not become common until the mid-19th century, when the register was mounted on the aft rail, where it could be read at any time; another Englishman, Thomas Walker, introduced successive refinements of the patent log beginning in 1861. This form of log is still in use.
Michael William Richey
The magnetic compass
The lodestone and the compass card
It is not known where or when it was discovered that the lodestone (a magnetized mineral composed of an iron oxide) aligns itself in a north-south direction, as does a piece of iron that has been magnetized by contact with a lodestone. Neither is it known where or when marine navigators first availed themselves of these discoveries. Plausible records indicate that the Chinese were using the magnetic compass around ad 1100, western Europeans by 1187, Arabs by 1220, and Scandinavians by 1300. The device could have originated in each of these groups, or it could have been passed from one to the others. All of them had been making long voyages, relying on steady winds to guide them and sightings of the Sun or a familiar star to inform them of any change. When the magnetic compass was introduced, it probably was used merely to check the direction of the wind when clouds obscured the sky.
The first mariner’s compass may have consisted of a magnetized needle attached to a wooden splinter or a reed floating on water in a bowl. In a later version the needle was pivoted near its centre on a pin fixed to the bottom of the bowl. By the 13th century a card bearing a painted wind rose was mounted on the needle; the navigator could then simply read his heading from the card. So familiar has this combination become that it is called the compass, although that word originally signified the division of the horizon. The suspension of the compass bowl in gimbals (originally used to keep lamps upright on tossing ships) was first mentioned in 1537.
On early compass cards the north point was emphasized by a broad spearhead and the letter T for tramontana, the name given to the north wind. About 1490 a combination of these evolved into the fleur-de-lis, still almost universally used. The east point, pointing toward the Holy Land, was marked with a cross; the ornament into which this cross developed continued on British compass cards well into the 19th century. The use of 32 points by sailors of northern Europe, usually attributed to Flemish compass makers, is mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391). It also has been said that the navigators of Amalfi, Italy, first expanded the number of compass points to 32, and they may have been the first to attach the card to the needle.
During the 15th century it became apparent that the compass needle did not point true north from all locations but made an angle with the local meridian. This phenomenon was originally called by seamen the northeasting of the needle but is now called the variation or declination. For a time, compass makers in northern countries mounted the needle askew on the card so that the fleur-de-lis indicated true north when the needle pointed to magnetic north. This practice died out about 1700 because it succeeded only for short voyages near the place where the compass was made; it caused confusion and difficulty on longer trips, especially in crossing the Atlantic to the American coast, where the declination was west instead of east as in Europe. The declination in a given location varies over time. For example, in northern Europe in the 16th century the magnetic north pole was east of true geographic north; in subsequent centuries it has drifted to the west.
Despite its acknowledged value, the magnetic compass long remained a fragile, troublesome, and unreliable instrument, subject to mysterious disturbances. The introduction of iron and then steel for hulls and engines in the 19th century caused further concern because it was well known that nearby ironwork would deflect the compass needle. In 1837 the British Admiralty set up a committee to seek rational methods of ensuring the accuracy of compasses installed on iron ships. In 1840 the committee introduced a new design that proved so successful that it was promptly adopted by all the principal navies of the world. Further refinements, aimed at reducing the effects of engine vibration and the shock of gunfire, continued throughout the century.
The liquid magnetic compass
The liquid magnetic compass, now almost universally used, is commonly accompanied by an azimuth instrument for taking bearings of distant objects. The compass consists of a set of steel needles with a compass card, attached to a float, in a bowl of water and alcohol. In modern instruments, the magnetic element is often in the form of a ring magnet, fitted within the float. The card is usually of mica or plastic with photographically printed graduations; metal cards with perforated graduations also are used. Cards are usually graduated clockwise from 0° at north to 359°, with the eight principal points indicated.
A jewel is fitted at the centre of the float to bear on an iridium-tipped pivot attached to the bowl of the compass. The liquid in which the directional system is placed serves two purposes: to reduce the weight on the pivot point, and thereby to minimize friction; and to damp out oscillations from the ship’s motion. The bowl is closed on the top and bottom by glass, the bottom glass permitting illumination from below, and is mounted in gimbals. A flexible diaphragm or bellows attached to the bowl accommodates the change in volume of the liquid caused by temperature changes. The ship’s heading is read with the aid of the lubber’s line, which is oriented toward the forward part of the compass to indicate the direction of the ship’s centre line.
When the ship alters course, liquid at the side of the bowl tends to displace slightly, deflecting the card and causing what is known as swirl error. To minimize swirl error, the card is often made considerably smaller in diameter than the bowl. The directional system is made sufficiently bottom-heavy (pendulous) to counteract the downward pull of the vertical component of the Earth’s magnetic field, which would otherwise cause the system to tilt.
The simplest, and probably earliest, azimuth instrument consists of two sights on opposite sides of the compass bowl connected by a thread. The assembly can be rotated to permit sighting on the distant object. Because it is impossible to sight through the instrument and look at the compass card simultaneously, a prism (mirror) is positioned to reflect an image of the card, which is given a second set of graduations with reversed figures. Modern azimuth instruments embody a number of refinements, but the principle remains unchanged.
The binnacle, formerly called the bittacle, is the receptacle in which the compass is mounted. Originally constructed in the form of a cupboard, it is now usually a cylindrical pedestal with provision for illuminating the compass card, usually from below. It contains various correctors to reduce the deviations of the compass caused by the magnetism of the ship. These usually consist of properly placed magnets, a pair of soft iron spheres (or small strips close to the compass), and a vertical soft iron bar called the Flinders bar, which originated in recommendations made by the English navigator Matthew Flinders.
Binnacles are sometimes constructed so that an image of part of the compass card can be projected or reflected through a tube onto a viewing screen on the deck below. This arrangement can make it unnecessary to provide a second compass for the helmsman and may allow the binnacle to be placed in a position less susceptible to magnetic disturbances.
William Edward MayJohn Lawrance Howard
Marine charts
The portolano
During the course of 15 centuries or more, the coastal pilot book of Classical times evolved into the portolano, or portolan chart, the harbour-finding manual of the Middle Ages. An early portolano for the whole Mediterranean Sea, Lo compasso da navigare (1296), gives directions in terms of half points—that is, halves of the angles defined by the 32-point compass. From such works, accumulated over generations and collected during the 13th century into a single volume for the entire Mediterranean, the first marine charts were drawn. On these charts, most of which were compiled in Genoa, Venice, and Majorca, north was at the top, rather than east, as was the practice on most land maps of the time. They carried a scale of distances and a colour-coded pattern of rhumb lines, or loxodromes (with lines of the same colour crossing the Earth’s meridians at a constant angle, so that following each rhumb line maintains a constant bearing). To set a course between two ports, the pilot would join the corresponding points on the chart with a straight line, find the rhumb line most nearly parallel to it, and trace the rhumb line back to its parent wind rose, from which he obtained the required heading. As long as the ship’s location was to be found by dead reckoning (keeping a running record of the distances and directions traveled), the Mediterranean chart was entirely adequate. Questions of latitude, longitude, compass variation, and curvature of the Earth’s surface could be safely ignored.
The Mercator chart
When the Portuguese, under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator, ventured farther south along the west coast of Africa, they encountered navigational difficulties by assuming that the charts used in the Mediterranean could simply be extended. Over long distances the rhumb lines could not be taken as straight, and the charts bore no relation to the new methods of checking the dead reckoning that Portuguese astronomers and mathematicians had devised. These methods required a chart on which positions were expressed as latitudes and longitudes rather than bearings and distances. Such a chart had to embody a practical method of representing the curved meridians and parallels on a flat surface. Even for an area as large as the Mediterranean, this can be done without grossly falsifying either distances or directions, but for larger regions some distortions are inevitable, and a choice has to be made between alternative mapping techniques. On certain types of charts, distances can be shown accurately, but directions cannot; on other types, directions are reliably presented, but the scale of distance varies greatly between different parts of the chart. The navigator accepts the second type because the risk of lengthening the voyage is preferable to that of missing the target.
In 1569 the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator published a world map that he had composed using a “projection suitable for navigation,” the details of which he did not disclose. (The Mercator and other projections are treated in the article map.) On a Mercator chart the meridians of longitude are represented by equally spaced vertical lines, and the parallels of latitude are represented by horizontal lines that are closer together near the Equator than near the poles. The uneven spacing of the parallels compensates for the increasing exaggeration of the east-west distance between adjacent meridians at higher latitudes; this distance decreases on the Earth but remains the same on the chart. In 1599 the English mathematician Edward Wright supplied a rational explanation of Mercator’s projection and provided tables by which the distorted distances could be corrected.
Latitude measurements
Portuguese seamen determined latitude by observing the elevation angle of the polestar—that is, the angle between its direction and the horizontal. They knew from astronomical studies that the star does not lie exactly on the extension of the Earth’s axis, so that it appears to move daily in a small circle around the celestial pole, but the necessary correction (as much as 31/2° in the 15th century) could be applied by noting the position of the nearby star Kochab. When the navigators got close to the Equator, these stars fell below the horizon; there it became necessary to rely on observing the altitude of the noonday Sun and calculating latitude with the aid of an almanac.
The first instruments used at sea for elevation angle measurements seem to have been the quadrant and the astrolabe, long known to astronomers. For both devices the reference direction was actually the vertical, rather than the horizontal, but conversion of the readings was an elementary matter. The mariner’s astrolabe, however, was less widely used than its 16th-century successor, the cross-staff, a simple device consisting of a staff about 3 feet (1 metre) long fitted with a sliding crosspiece (seephotograph). The navigator, holding the staff to one eye, would move the crosspiece until its lower end coincided with the horizon and its upper end with the polestar (seefigure). The desired elevation could then be read from the intersection of the crosspiece with the staff, on which a scale was marked in degrees. The cross-staff remained in use until the 18th century despite several drawbacks, the most serious being that it required the observer to look directly into the Sun. Coloured shades were fitted to the crosspiece, but the decisive improvement was made in 1594 by the English navigator John Davis. His instrument, called the backstaff because it was used with the observer’s back to the Sun, remained common even after 1731 when the octant (an early form of the modern sextant) was demonstrated independently by John Hadley of England (seephotograph) and Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia. In the octant and the sextant, two mirrors—one fixed, the other movable—bring the image of the Sun into coincidence with the horizon. In the hands of the practiced observer, the modern sextant can be used to measure elevation angles with an accuracy of 10 seconds of arc—that is, close enough to determine a ship’s north-south position within a few hundred metres.
Longitude measurements
Almanacs and tables
One of the earliest tabulations of the day-to-day positions of the heavenly bodies was Ephemerides, compiled by the German astronomer Regiomontanus and published by him in Nürnberg in 1474. This work also set forth the principle of determining longitude by the method of lunar distances—that is, the angular displacement of the Moon from other celestial objects. This method, which was destined to become the standard for a time during the 19th century, remained impracticable for more than three centuries because of the inaccuracy of existing lunar tables and because special knowledge and tedious computations were necessary in its use. Meanwhile, during the 16th and 17th centuries, working from translations of Portuguese and Spanish manuals, a flourishing school of instrument makers, chart makers, and teachers grew in England. This group rapidly improved the theory of navigation and compiled tables of increasing accuracy. In 1675 the Royal Observatory was established at Greenwich with the specific object of providing sailors with astronomical data of the required precision. At Paris the Connaissance des temps, the first national almanac, was founded in 1679; it contained tables for the crude determination of longitude from observations of the occultation or eclipses of Jupiter’s moons by Jupiter, first seen by Galileo in 1610. (Galileo himself had advocated the preparation of such tables for this purpose, but the method, though sound in principle, could not be made practical aboard sailing ships.) In 1755 Johann Tobias Mayer, a German astronomer, published remarkably accurate tables of the motion of the Moon. To make them useful to navigators, however, it was necessary to prepare from them an ephemeris of the Moon for every noon and midnight. The English astronomer royal, Nevil Maskelyne, supervised this task; the results were published in the annual Nautical Almanac, which was inaugurated in 1766.
The marine chronometer
Latitude could be determined by measuring the altitude of the Sun at noon or the altitude of any tabulated star when it crossed the local meridian, but the determination of longitude at sea remained a serious problem. By the Middle Ages, astronomers knew that the local time of an eclipse depended on the longitude, and in the 16th century they pointed out the principle of determining longitude by comparing the local time with the reading of a clock that reliably kept the time of a known meridian; because the Earth revolves 360° in 24 hours, or 1/4° every minute, it was possible to ascertain how far east or west a ship had traveled by comparing a marine timekeeper set to keep time with the location of the ship’s point of departure and the ship’s local time as measured by the Sun and stars. But no accurate marine timekeeper was then available. Even on dry land, the best 17th-century clocks were capable of keeping time to an accuracy of only one or two seconds over an interval of several days. Placed on board a ship, clocks became even more unreliable. After being subjected to bouncing waves, corrosive salt sprays, and unpredictable variations in temperature, pressure, and humidity, most shipboard clocks either stopped running or became too unstable to permit accurate navigation. Finally, in 1714, the British Board of Longitude offered a prize of £20,000 to anyone who could discover a method of finding the longitude within 30 miles during a sea voyage. After more than 40 years of disciplined labour, a barely educated British cabinetmaker named John Harrison won the prize by constructing the first practical marine chronometer, an oversized jeweled pocket watch that was nearly twice as accurate as the finest land-based clocks of his day. At last mariners had a way to determine both latitude and longitude. For decades thereafter the precise timing measurements obtained from marine chronometers, coupled with sextant sightings of the celestial bodies, allowed explorers to journey with dependable precision throughout the world.
Michael William Richey
Other aids to navigation
An Egyptian temple decoration dating from about 1600 bc shows a ship on which a member of the crew is measuring the depth of the water with a long pole. The Viking sailor took soundings with a lead weight on a line, hauling in the line and measuring it by the span of his arms. Today depths are still cited in 6-foot (1.8-metre) intervals called fathoms, from the Old Norse word fathmr (“outstretched arms”). The weight was commonly given a hollow bottom filled with tallow to pick up a sample of the seabed for comparison with the composition indicated on the chart. Distance from a cliff could be estimated by timing the echoes of shouts or drumbeats.
To reduce the risk of collision and to allow other ships to follow, a ship under way at night displayed running lights by which sailors on nearby vessels could judge its course and speed. The traditional coloured lights, red to port (left) and green to starboard (right), were augmented on steamships with a white light at the head of the foremast. In foggy weather, gongs, bells, or explosives were used to produce loud warning sounds; eventually these devices were replaced by foghorns. Rules that specified what lights must be shown, what signals must be given, and how ships must navigate in respect of each other were formulated for British mariners in 1862. These rules formed the basis of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, which were adopted by nearly all maritime nations after a conference held in 1889. Collision avoidance also was fostered by general acceptance of the recommendation—separate lanes for eastbound and westbound steamers in the heavily traveled North Atlantic—appearing in Sailing Directions (1855), prepared by the U.S. naval officer Matthew F. Maury, who also mapped ocean currents worldwide. The danger of running aground was lessened by a worldwide system of lighthouses, lightships, buoys, bells, and channel markers; the development of these aids to navigation is treated in the article lighthouse.
Edward W. Anderson
Quick Facts
key people
related topics
Navigational instruments refers to the instruments used by nautical navigators and pilots as tools of their trade. The purpose of navigation is to ascertain the present position and to determine the speed, direction etc. to arrive at the port or point of destination.
3Position finding instruments
Charts and drafting instruments[edit]
Charts are maps of the areas to be navigated with details specific to the marine environment.
Computing aids: used in the necessary mathematical calculations. Today electronic computers or calculators are used. Other traditional aids used included tables (trigonometric, logarithms, etc.) and slide rules.
Dividers used for measuring lengths of lines and approximate lengths of non-linear paths on a chart.
Nautical almanac used to determine the position in the sky of a celestial body after a sight has been taken.
Parallel rules used for transferring a line to a parallel position. Also used to compare the orientation of a line to a magnetic or geographic orientation on a compass rose.
Direct measuring[edit]
Chip log and sand glass serve to measure the ship's speed through the water.
Sounding line used to measure the depth of the water and to pick up samples from the bottom.
Position finding instruments[edit]
Celestial navigation instruments[edit]
These instruments are used primarily to measure the elevation or altitude of a celestial object:
Back staff, the best known of which is the Davis' quadrant. It could measure the altitude of the sun without having the navigator directly observe the sun.
Cross staff, an older instrument long out of use.
Kamal Very simple instrument used primarily by Arabian navigators. It consists of a small board with a knotted piece of twine through the center. The observer holds one of the knots in his mouth and extends the board away so that the edges make a constant angle with his eyes.
Mariner's astrolabe Derived from the astrolabe, it was developed in late 15th century and found use in the 16th to 17th centuries. It was replaced by the back staff and later by the octant and sextant.
Quadrant A very simple instrument which used a plumb bob.
These instruments are also used to measure the angular distance between objects:
Octant, invented in 1731. The first widely accepted instrument that could measure an angle without being strongly affected by movement.
Sextant, derived from the octant in 1757, eventually made all previous instruments used for the same purpose obsolete.
Bearing instruments[edit]
Pelorus used to determine bearings relative to the ship's heading of landmarks, other ships, etc.
Compasses[edit]
Bearing compass used to determine magnetic bearings of landmarks, other ships or celestial bodies.
Magnetic compass used to determine the magnetic heading of the ship.
Timekeeping[edit]
Marine chronometer used to determine time at the prime meridian with great precision which is necessary when reducing sights in celestial navigation.
Nocturnal used to determine apparent local time by viewing the Polaris and its surrounding stars.
Ring dial or astronomical ring used to measure the height of a celestial body above the horizon. It could be used to find the altitude of the sun or determine local time. It let sunlight shine through a small orifice on the rim of the instrument. The point of light striking the far side of the instrument gave the altitude or tell time.
All those mentioned were the traditional instruments used until well into the second half of the 20th century. After World War II electronic aids to navigation developed very rapidly and, to a great extent, replaced more traditional tools. Electronic speed and depth finders have totally replaced their older counterparts. Radar has become widespread even in small boats. Some Electronic aids to navigation like LORAN have already become obsolete themselves and have been replaced by GPS.
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Navigational_instrument&oldid=872396573'