Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté. Image fixe : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Huth, John Edward
Titre(s) : The lost art of finding our way [Texte imprimé] / John Edward Huth
Publication : Cambridge (Mass.) : Belknap press of Harvard university press, 2013
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (528 p.) : ill. ; 25 cm
Comprend : Before the bubble ; Maps in the mind ; On being lost ; Dead reckoning ; Urban
myths of navigation ; Maps and compasses ; Stars ; The sun and the moon ; Where
heaven meets earth ; Latitude and longitude ; Red sky at night ; Reading the waves
; Soundings and tides ; Currents and gyres ; Speed and stability of hulls ; Against
the wind ; Fellow wanderers ; Baintabu's story.
Note(s) : Bibliogr. p. 499-511
"Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances
using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost
when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic
in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography,
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators
for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally,
a matter of life and death. Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fogbank
off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena--the way the
Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned
to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and "read"
waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable
of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills
of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and
ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way.
Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth's compelling
account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is
part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of
navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world
into sharper view."--Book jacket
Sujet(s) : Navigation -- Histoire
Art et science navals -- Histoire
Indice(s) Dewey :
629.045 09 (23e éd.)
Numéros : ISBN 9780674072824. - ISBN 0674072820 (rel.)
Notice n° :
FRBNF43672358
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
