Every navigator loves his sextant. He bought it when he was still at school, paid perhaps $100 for it. When he is signed on a new ship, it is assumed he will bring his own sextant; it is bad nautical manners to borrow another man's. It may be more or less ornate but it is much the same as the sextant that John Hadley invented in 1731.* Every noon at sea he goes up on the bridge and measures the angle the sun and the horizon make in the...
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