Line of Position Navigation: Sumner and Saint-Hilaire, The Two Pillars of Modern Celestial Navigation

An interesting review on the art of navigation.What do we do if the GPS satellites have gone?Do we still have the knowledge to know where we are?This book gives an interesting insight view in the latest developments of "old fashioned" sextant navigation.Practical and historical interesting.[[ASIN:1588320685 Line Of Position Navigation:: Sumner And Saint-Hilaire: The Two Pillars Of Modern Celestial Navigation

What is not made clear in Amazon's brief review of this book is that the bulk of the book, apart from about thirty pages, is made up of reprints of Sumner's and Saint-Hilaire's original articles. Personally, if I had known that before buying, I would not have bought it.

I wish more books on the historical development of great ideas were as well conceived as this one. The book offers a concise and well written presentation of the line of position navigation method, followed by the texts of the original papers written by the inventors. Many times we wish we had access to the original papers which are hard to obtain, here the authors did all the work for us.

The book is clearly written. It includes an English translation to the original works. Plus, it translates into modern words some of the concepts introduced by Sumner and Saint-Hilaire. I am missing a better description of earlier ideas, in particular from the portuguese Pedro Nunes. It is only mentioned in passing, and I think that a better description of his work would make even more clear some of the issues addresses by Capt. Sumner.In summary, the book is a pleasure to read.