History of Navigation, Developments Since Columbus

Vincenzo Nastro and Aniello Russo

Abstract:	At the end of 15th century seaman was able to give satisfactory replies to main problems of navigation in spite of the incertitude due to approximate instrumentation and cartography. This paper presents a review of the progress in the field of navigation: from the determination of latitude by sightings of Polaris or Sun, from the calculus of longitude by lunar distances and by local hour angle till the simultaneous determination of both the coordinates by astronomical position lines. The advent of radio systems, inertial techniques and the progress in space researches have relegated the astronomical navigation to a secondary role even though it could be subject to improve. The availability of modern digital-computers has allowed the development of mathematical and statistical techniques that replace the man in the hard computation burden and even in the valuation in the precision of obtained data. 1 - Man has wandered first of all on the land, then on the sea and in modem times in the air and space. In all these circumstances man has always used every endeavour to compare the data of his position obtained from the estimate with data derived from the surveying of local landmarks, celestial bodies or, in our days, by means of radioelectrical aids. This comparison has always been useful to correct the unprecisions of guidance systems and to overcome the consequences of environmental perturbations on own motion. Today this comparison is effected among different sensors, of which the statistics of errors are known, by means of algorithms that optimise the results,
Published in:	Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1992) June 29 - 1, 1992 ANA Westin Hotel Dayton, OH
Pages:	435 - 441
Cite this article:	Nastro, Vincenzo, Russo, Aniello, "History of Navigation, Developments Since Columbus," Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1992), Dayton, OH, June 1992, pp. 435-441.
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