Article ID: CBB000931360

De quelle précision a-t-on réellement besoin en mer ? Quelques aspects de la diffusion des méthodes de détermination astronomique et chronométrique des longitudes en mer en France, de Lacaille à Mouchez (1750--1880) (2006)

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Boistel, Guy (Author)


Histoire & Mesure
Volume: 21, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 121-156


Publication Date: 2006
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: “Mesurer le Ciel et la Terre”
Language: French

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the methods and the instruments of nautical astronomy evolved clearly, offering to seafarers two complementary sets of methods for the detetmination of the longitudes at sea: the lunar distances and methods using timekeepers. When abbot Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille developed a graphic method in 1759, which allowed the seafarers to reach quickly one degree of reasonable precision on the longitudes, a few years later, the Chevalier de Borda answered with a more ambitious mathematical method, developed for the elites, which led to a higher accuracy of the computations. One century later, the officer Ernest Mouchez and the astronomer Antoine Yvon-Villarceau opposed in similar terms on the degree of the mathematics implemented in the methods employed for the control of the thermal drift of the timekeepers. Thus, it is possible to consider in a same run up, the history of some hundred fifty years of high astronomical navigation, between the 1750s and the end of the 19th century. This study also approaches a new view, the questions of the dissemination of the knowledges, and of the vocational training of both the naval officers and the captains and pilots of the merchant marine.

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Article Barbin, Évelyne; Boistel, Guy (2006) Introduction. Histoire & Mesure (pp. 3-6). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Grijs, Richard de
Kinns, Roger
Hilster, Nicolàs de
Morfouli, Meropi
Julien Gressot
Wells, William
Concepts
Longitude and latitude
Nautical astronomy
Instruments, navigational
Time measurement
Astronomy
Time measuring instruments
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
16th century
Enlightenment
20th century, early
Places
France
Greenwich (England)
Neuchâtel (Switzerland)
United States
Netherlands
Spain
Institutions
Observatoire de Neuchâtel
Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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