The Nautical Sextant reveals in pictures, prose, and perspective the experience and knowledge gained by the author from years of acquiring, studying, and restoring sextants from earlier times and from around the world.
This fascinating book owes much of its attraction to the expert description and photos of the mechanics of the sextants and their subassemblies. It is also the story of how different manufacturers, in different times and places, solved the same mechanical problems in different ways in order to perfect one of the most accurate mechanical devices ever produced by man. All of this is complemented by an
historical overview to the current day, an overview which has never been published until now.
The Nautical Sextant will be of particular value not only to navigators, but also to restorers, collectors, students of technology, curators, and sextant dealers. With its
bibliography and extensive use of footnotes, this book will certainly become a classic in its field.
Born in the UK and educated at Cambridge University, W.J. Morris has spent most of his working life practicing medicine in New Zealand. Since retiring, he has fully indulged his interest in sextants and other fine measuring instruments. Over the years he has written numerous articles for laymen on engineering workshop technology and has restored many aircraft and nautical sextants to working order.
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