Ronald Raygun wrote:
Dennis Pogson wrote:

G S wrote:
Is his any good?

William the Conqueror used one of these to navigate from Calais to
Hastings and thought it was a super instrument!

It's a little-known fact that he was actually bound for Bournemouth
for a relaxing seaside holiday, but ended up in Hastings as a result
of a navigation error.

This was because his own GPS was literally stabbed to death in an
accident at an informal darts match in a Calais vinotheque, so a
replacement was hurriedly procured locally. His fleet was already
more than half way to Bournemouth by the time his navigator had come
to grips with the instruction manual for the unfamiliar Garmin (he
was used to a Magellan), and so when they switched it on, the
position displayed told them they'd gone too far.

They duly turned back and the rest, as they say, is history.

What went wrong?

Because the navigator was busy frantically studying the manual, he
didn't personally supervise the DR navigation, which he had delegated
to an apprentice. Once the GPS was up and running, the apprentice's
EPs, which were in fact accurate, were dismissed as obviously
erroneous.

Unbeknownst to the navigator, who hadn't quite gotten round to
digesting the manual's "advanced features" section, the GPS receiver,
having been supplied for the French market, had been
factory-pre-programmed to default to French datum, which of course
back then was based on the zero meridian going through Paris.

Fascinating, the history of these GPS II's, I would definitely buy it for
the historical value alone!

Remove "nospam" from return address.


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