Compass - A Story of Exploration and Innovation (gnv64) torrent

Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation
by Alan Gurney
W. W. Norton | August 2005 | ISBN-10: 0393327132 | ePUB/MOVI | 10.1/11.2 mb
https://www.amazon.com/Compass-Exploration-Innovation-Alan-Gurney/dp/0393327132

Compass chronicles the misadventures of those who attempted to perfect the magnetic compass-so precious to sixteenth-century seamen that, by law, any man found tampering with it had his hand pinned to the mast with a dagger. From the time man first took to the seas until only one thousand years ago, sight and winds were the sailor's only navigational aids. It was not until the development of the compass that maps and charts could be used with any accuracy-even so, it would be hundreds of years and thousands of shipwrecks before the marvelous instrument was perfected. And its history up to modern times is filled with the stories of disasters that befell sailors who misused it. In this page-turning history of man's search for reliable navigation of treacherous sea routes around the globe, Alan Gurney brings to life the instrument Victor Hugo called "the soul of the ship."

CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1 Dead Reckoning
Chapter 2 Needle and Stone
Chapter 3 The Rose of the Winds
Chapter 4 Variation and Dip
Chapter 5 Edmond Halley, Polymath
Chapter 6 To Compass the Globe
Chapter 7 Halleyan Lines
Chapter 8 Dr. Gowin Knight and His Magnetic Machine
Chapter 9 Knight’s Compass
Chapter 10 The Shocks of Tempestuous Seas
Chapter 11 Any Old Iron, Any Old Iron
Chapter 12 The Book of Bearings
Chapter 13 The Flinders Bar
Chapter 14 Soft Iron, Hard Iron
Chapter 15 “An Evil So Pregnant with Mischief”
Chapter 16 Deviation, the Hydra-Headed Monster
Chapter 17 The “Inextricable Entangled Web”
Chapter 18 Gray’s Binnacle
Chapter 19 Thomson’s Compass and Binnacle
Chapter 20 The Selling of a Compass
Chapter 21 A Question of Liquidity
Epilogue: From Needle to Spinning Top
Appendix: Deviation
Notes