Abstract
IF the compass is the navigator's sheet-anchor, the sextant is certainly his best bower; and just as the former was known, if not generally used in Europe, about a century before Flavio Gioia got the credit of discovering it, so the latter was invented by the transcendent genius of Sir Isaac Newton, more than half a century before it was re-invented by Hadley in 1731. Newton does not seem to have suggested its adaptability for navigational purposes, or if so, it was not sufficiently known or taken up, and I am not aware of any reason to suspect that Hadley knew of Newton's discovery.
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RUTHVEN, J. Nautical Astronomy. Nature 58, 151–154 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058151d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058151d0