A Brief History of Location

Christopher Columbus was among the keenest navigators of his time. His techniques are not much different than the techniques used in GPS. We start here because this is the period of time where we first discover the method and tools used in determining the location and creating maps. At this time, September 10, 1942, Christopher Columbus was crossing the Atlantic and annotating his ships log with their current position. He believed the earth to be a sphere although to this day, there are those who refute this (the Flat Earth Society www.theflatearthsociety.org). Columbus refined techniques and tools for location determination.

Columbus was known to be an expert in one of two technologies of the day. The sailors in those times used two kinds of navigation methods.

Many believed in using the stars, or Celestial Navigation. Each star had celestial latitude. If you knew the latitude of a star (how far north or south of the equator it stood), you could determine where you were on earth. The North Star was popular and if you wished to travel east across the Atlantic in a straight line, you merely kept the star off your starboard side at the same position.

Columbus technology of choice was deduced reckoning navigation or dead reckoning navigation (DR Navigation). The standard method of dead reckoning was to mark a line at the front and the back of the ship. A sailor stood at each post and the man at the front would...