[mjlee]

I used to be a professional sailor, and love finding nautical terminology in programming. At sea dead reckoning is navigating using the speed and direction of the ship, and adding tide and wind to calculate a fix based on the last known position. The term dates back to the 1600s.

It is fun to point at a chart and confidently state “We’re here! I reckon...”

[drzaiusx11]

There's a book I read a while back named "Longitude" that maps the storied quest in science to improve upon dead reckoning by devising greater and greater accuracy in time pieces used on ships. Iirc it was a fun read if anyone else finds that sort of thing interesting (as I do.)

[mjlee]

It's a great read! A story of how the scientific elite stalled progress because the right answer wasn't the one they hoped it would be, and didn't come from the sort of person they thought it should.

If you get the chance, you can see some of Harrison's chronometers at the Royal Observatory in London, though I don't know if they're always on display.

I'll add a recommendation for Sextant by David Barrie.

[drzaiusx11]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll add it to the shortlist!

[sebg]

What other books do you like?

[drzaiusx11]

Pick a subject I guess, that's a really hard question

[sebg]

Last two books that you read?

[drzaiusx11]

"Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap" by David Gingery which covers everything from building a foundry to making all your tools from first principles using nothing but river sand and junk metal for smelting.

"On Trails" by Robert Moore that discusses how walking paths from the first peoples persist, grow and change over hundreds of years, along with advances in walking trail design in recent years to become a part time recreational activity vs the pure utility of terrain traversal as they first were. Covers how a trail is a "living thing", as it were, because any who tread on it help reinforce it. Covers non human trails like ants and their reenforcement via pheromones and the like.

[Jare]

I think the introduction of the term in networking simulations and games came with SIMNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMNET and continued more widely in the DIS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Interactive_Simula...

I first learned of it in some writing about a 1997 multiplayer game called, heh, Dead Reckoning.