To Find Out Where One
Is On The Earth's Surface, He Must Know, At Precisely The Same Time,
Where The Sun Is In The Heavens.
That is to say, the sun, which is
the timekeeper for men, doesn't run on time.
When I discovered
this, I fell into deep gloom and all the Cosmos was filled with
doubt. Immutable laws, such as gravitation and the conservation of
energy, became wobbly, and I was prepared to witness their violation
at any moment and to remain unastonished. For see, if the compass
lied and the sun did not keep its engagements, why should not
objects lose their mutual attraction and why should not a few bushel
baskets of force be annihilated? Even perpetual motion became
possible, and I was in a frame of mind prone to purchase Keeley-
Motor stock from the first enterprising agent that landed on the
Snark's deck. And when I discovered that the earth really rotated
on its axis 366 times a year, while there were only 365 sunrises and
sunsets, I was ready to doubt my own identity.
This is the way of the sun. It is so irregular that it is
impossible for man to devise a clock that will keep the sun's time.
The sun accelerates and retards as no clock could be made to
accelerate and retard. The sun is sometimes ahead of its schedule;
at other times it is lagging behind; and at still other times it is
breaking the speed limit in order to overtake itself, or, rather, to
catch up with where it ought to be in the sky. In this last case it
does not slow down quick enough, and, as a result, goes dashing
ahead of where it ought to be. In fact, only four days in a year do
the sun and the place where the sun ought to be happen to coincide.
The remaining 361 days the sun is pothering around all over the
shop. Man, being more perfect than the sun, makes a clock that
keeps regular time. Also, he calculates how far the sun is ahead of
its schedule or behind. The difference between the sun's position
and the position where the sun ought to be if it were a decent,
self-respecting sun, man calls the Equation of Time. Thus, the
navigator endeavouring to find his ship's position on the sea, looks
in his chronometer to see where precisely the sun ought to be
according to the Greenwich custodian of the sun. Then to that
location he applies the Equation of Time and finds out where the sun
ought to be and isn't. This latter location, along with several
other locations, enables him to find out what the man from Kansas
demanded to know some years ago.
The Snark sailed from Fiji on Saturday, June 6, and the next day,
Sunday, on the wide ocean, out of sight of land, I proceeded to
endeavour to find out my position by a chronometer sight for
longitude and by a meridian observation for latitude.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 116 of 157
Words from 59169 to 59676
of 80724
