Non-weapons of war, weapons of war

Whingnut wrote:This means that you are 360 degrees/26.516 hours *5.03 hours = 68.29 degrees west of Telesberg. (I think my math is close)

Now do all that in Roman Numerals.

Weird Harold wrote:Now do all that in Roman Numerals.

I am not going to but if you ever want to do some math using Roman numerals check out this site.

http://turner.faculty.swau.edu/mathemat ... ary/roman/

I had a lot of fun reading this but I am very thankful for the decimal system

Whingnut wrote::geek:
...
Taken all together if you know that the time in Telesberg is 0658 and it is 1200 at your current location then you are 5 hours and 2 minutes west (assume east to west rotation) of Telesberg. This means that you are 360 degrees/26.516 hours *5.03 hours = 68.29 degrees west of Telesberg. (I think my math is close) it is stated that using this method you can get within plus or minus 10 nautical miles of your actual location. If you know the location of a second astronomical body in relation to your sun you can get an accuracy of 1 nautical mile.

Coupla' problems:

1. Solar noon isn't mean noon on most days due to orbital eccentricity and the fact that the ecliptic in the sky and the equator on Earth are not aligned. This means your measurement of solar noon can be out synch with mean noon (the noon assumed by your math in the example above) by as much as 16 minutes which works out to +/- 240 nautical miles! This needs to be corrected for obviously.

2. Measuring and predicting the equation of time even with no knowledge of orbital mechanics or of heliocentrism is quite possible, Ptolemy did it. But it's going to take a while with no underlying theory to guide you. And, the effort to refigure it for each year (each second of clock error is a quarter of a mile error on the map) and to publish this annually for all ships would be immense. I think we'd have heard about it.

3. Langhorne's Watch is going to screw with the math, "Church" noon on Safehold is not going to be the correct "noon" to use! They will need to define "nautical noon" as the point the sun is highest in the sky which will be (on average) 16.5 minutes later than "Church" noon. As well, there is no way that hours and minutes can map nicely into any longitudinal system when there is comp time. Just like we had to develop nautical miles (1 minute of angle) Safeholdians will have to develop a nautical day divided into equal intervals for your calculation to work.

3a. In this vein, I have no idea how Safeholdian sundials work as they must have done something to deal with the fact that "Church" noon by the "clock"--where no clock exists--is not solar noon. In fact, I have no idea what their concept of "noon" even is given this fact. Or else the Creator of this universe neglected to think about this point from his chronocentric POV!

3.b. Nor, do I have any idea of what Hastings used for a coordinate structure in his maps except we know the concept of minute of angle is there from textev. There really is an equal interval "nautical day" hiding in the maps that they never knew about. This could provide interesting evidence for Merlin to use some day!

4. Decimal degrees (which you assume) versus degrees, minutes, seconds is another slight problem in calculations and tables. Not insurmountable, but it shows how our mindset is different. All marine GPSs allow formats to display. However, as paper charts and the underlying charts even on a GPS chartplotter use degrees-minutes-seconds. Certainly when you talk to the Coast Guard they prefer positions in degrees and minutes over decimal degrees. NO one on the water thinks 47.57 deg N over 47deg 33min N. This is changing slowly, I think.

Degrees and decimal minutes is a halfway point which marine GPS chartplotters allow. That is more "natural" as minutes are nautical miles (of latitude) and therefore the decimal relates to something real in your mind. I find the Coast Guard is fine with degrees and decimal minutes.

Hi Whingnut,

360 degrees would be a complete circle and bring you right back to Tellesburg.

Other than that little nit, good work.

L

Whingnut wrote::geek:
To calculate the longitude of a sailing ship using a chronometer you need to know three things.

1-When it is noon at your reference location. This is determine through the use of a chronometer. A chronometer is a very accurate and precise time keeping device. It needs to be able to keep time to with in minutes and seconds of the time at the reference location.(surprise this is one of the reason that long and latitude are broken up into degree.minute.second increments) To design a time keeping device accurate and precise enough to afford good sailing there are a number of additional things to consider.

A pendulum clock would not work on a sailing ship as the pendulum would be thrown off by the rocking of the ship. So a spring must be used. However not just any spring is acceptable. Materials will stretch and shrink based on their temperature. So a simple spring used at the cold pole would have a different tension then the same spring used at a equator. This can be corrected by using bimetallic element (two dissimilar elements "welded" together) to provide a type of feedback that moves a counter weight in or out from a fixed point to compensate for temperature change. Another point to take into account is that the tension in your spring lessens as the spring unwinds, it will therefore need some mechanism to compensate for this as well. And finally there needs to be some mechanism to provide "power" while the chronometer is being wound. A modern day mechanical chronometer may lose 0.1 second a day due to friction and other losses.

2-when it is Noon at your current location. Thankfully this is relatively easy. The use of a sextant will give you a reasonable indication when the sun is at its highest and therefor noon can be determined.

3- Geometry and trigonometry. The understanding that there are is a relationship between angles and location on a circle. With this if you know that the sun takes one day (26.516 hours Safehold time) to travel all the way around a circle of 360 degrees the. You can find the angle away from your reference point.

Taken all together if you know that the time in Telesberg is 0658 and it is 1200 at your current location then you are 5 hours and 2 minutes west (assume east to west rotation) of Telesberg. This means that you are 360 degrees/26.516 hours *5.03 hours = 68.29 degrees west of Telesberg. (I think my math is close) it is stated that using this method you can get within plus or minus 10 nautical miles of your actual location. If you know the location of a second astronomical body in relation to your sun you can get an accuracy of 1 nautical mile.

Yes 360 degrees is a complete circle. That is why I determined the ratio of hours to degrees. Then multiplied it by number of hours different between Telesberg and current location.

Faster communications. Don't ask me how thats up to RFC, but
i see that as a way to get a BIG advantage, especially if it can be done over water.


laz

laz wrote:Faster communications. Don't ask me how thats up to RFC, but i see that as a way to get a BIG advantage, especially if it can be done over water.


laz

The Church's semaphore system is about as fast as communication can get without electricity.

Maybe signal lights and Morse code can be contrived without electricity and those were used ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore in both world wars... It's not much faster than semaphore and limited to line-of-sight, but it's do-able.

Heliographs would be an improvement over semaphore in terms of msg speed (i.e., links can be farther apart and each character can be sent faster). Plus its mobility allows ease of repositioning and much better resistance to being overrun.

Weird Harold wrote:

laz wrote:Faster communications. Don't ask me how thats up to RFC, but i see that as a way to get a BIG advantage, especially if it can be done over water.


laz

The Church's semaphore system is about as fast as communication can get without electricity.

Maybe signal lights and Morse code can be contrived without electricity and those were used ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore in both world wars... It's not much faster than semaphore and limited to line-of-sight, but it's do-able.

laz wrote:Faster communications. Don't ask me how thats up to RFC, but
i see that as a way to get a BIG advantage, especially if it can be done over water.


laz

The easiest way to increase communication speed over water is to increase the speed of the ships. Steam propulsion has about doubled the speed over water, now all you need are more steam ships and they are working on it.

iranuke wrote:

laz wrote:Faster communications. Don't ask me how thats up to RFC, but
i see that as a way to get a BIG advantage, especially if it can be done over water.


laz

The easiest way to increase communication speed over water is to increase the speed of the ships. Steam propulsion has about doubled the speed over water, now all you need are more steam ships and they are working on it.

Yes but are they going to make a dedicated mail ship or 10? and will they open it up for civilian mail/parcels/cargo? with dedicated routes? not quite fedex.

Or they could lay fiberoptic cable and setup a optical telegraph.

the other side of the question is:
is there a way to speed up semaphore traffic? or semaphore bandwidth?
if for no other reason then to poke a sharp stick at the wonder the archangles (on purpose) and the COG by improving on their work.

also on the non-weapons front: zippers, velcro, duck tape, leatherman, weather prediction (fast communications), stapler, ballpoint pen with waterproof ink, COFFEE.


laz