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by dreamcompiler 2996 days ago
Fair point.

> That 19th century captain measured the angle between the pole star and the local horizon with a sextant;

Which immediately provided latitude. To get longitude, he did the same with just about any other star and correlated the angle to an accurate clock and carefully-prepared tables.

That "accurate clock" business was why longitude was such a difficult navigational problem for so long until John Harrison finally cracked it. (I know this is getting OT but I find it fascinating.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison