A review of the history of navigation and mapping, how developments in one drove developments in the other, how scientific and engineering understanding and development drove both, although not necessarily at the same speed.
From the cross staff to radio navigation, from a heliocentric universe to satellites, and from maps with blank areas filled in with fanciful sea creatures (and equally fanciful land masses) to digitised mapping, including several people who should have known better, some who got it right but didn’t know why, and some who knew they were right but weren’t believed.
Retrograde orbits, pig headed dogma, geoids and ellipsoids, reference frames, disasters and official inaction and an expected navigation accuracy of about a hundred miles, all wrapped up with bits of physics, astronomy, geodesy and maths.
Date: Wednesday 7 November. Lectures and talks start promptly at 1900 hrs.
Place: CA House
Booking: To book places on any lecture, and to indicate whether you’ll be ordering food, click on [Book Events Online]. Please pay on the door as usual. Any problems with the booking system, call or email Jeremy on 0207 5437 2828/reception@theca.org.uk. Tickets are: £4 for members and £7 for non-members. Season tickets are available at £28 for the nine lectures from 3 October to 5 December.