The Accuracy and Use of Sextants and Watches in Rupert's Land in the 1790s.
The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the sextants and watches employed at the end of the eighteenth century in surveying Rupert's Land, the vast territory of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and to discuss their usage and accuracy. The results provide information on the standards of manu...
| Publicado en: | Annals of Science Vol. 66; no. 2; pp. 209 - 230 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Apr2009
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=38229332&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 38229332 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00033790 7J1 jtl: Annals of Science issn: 00033790 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Apr2009 vid: 66 iid: 2 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 38229332 10.1080/00033790902743001 ppf: 209 ppct: 21 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 359KB tig: atl: The Accuracy and Use of Sextants and Watches in Rupert's Land in the 1790s. aug: au: Broughton, Peter affil: Killdeer Crescent, Toronto, ON, M4G 2W7, Canada su: Sextants Clocks & watches -- History Surveying instruments Artificial horizons (Nautical instruments) History of scientific instruments Rupert's Land Hudson Bay sug: subj: Rupert's Land Hudson Bay Sextants Clocks & watches -- History Surveying instruments Artificial horizons (Nautical instruments) History of scientific instruments ab: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the sextants and watches employed at the end of the eighteenth century in surveying Rupert's Land, the vast territory of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and to discuss their usage and accuracy. The results provide information on the standards of manufacture at the time, on the reliability of the contemporary latitude and longitude of various fur-trading posts, and on the careers of the surveyors themselves. The sextant readings are shown to have a standard deviation of about 20 arcseconds when used in a vertical position to find altitudes of the Sun and stars, and about 40 arcseconds otherwise, for finding lunar distances. Because of the use of artificial horizons, these conclusions imply that, at a 95% (2σ) confidence level, a single determination of latitude is reliable to ±20 arcseconds (600 m on the Earth's surface), of longitude ±20 arcminutes (approximately 60 km in Rupert's Land), and a single determination of local apparent time is reliable to ±3 s. The watches, it appears, could run at a steady rate with errors of less than a minute for a period of a week or two. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Annals of Science is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Annals of Science holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2009 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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