The days after the Sextant and before the GPS!
One fine day I was to leave the college for good and had packed my bags and stuff and got a bus ticket for the night! Only one thing left to do!
Collect my 1000 INR from one of my seniors!
He was a scary guy and I could never say no to him! Then again it was not the first time he borrowed and he usually gave it back in a couple of months!
Now since I was leaving college; it was time to close the deal!
He was a chronic and no one knew where he lived except for one junior who felt pity on me!
Now he had no idea about the address since he had gone only once! So he gave us a direction! It may be vague or accurate depending on your intelligence!
He said, take a right after a bakery and keep going for around 2 km and then after a bend you would see a tree placed oddly in the road and then take the second left after that tree and after a while you would get a small crossing from which you have to take a right and then you would get a field with a single house of two storeys! The house would be locked from outside but someone will be there!
Now of course he said stuff a little different than this but you get the gist! Remember that it was around 25 years back and my memory is not eidetic!
In spite of the vague direction, the most surprising thing is that we reached the house and rang the bell! It was locked but my senior’s sister did answer from inside! He was not there apparently!
In spite of our luck of finding the house, we were unlucky!
Years later I managed to track him in Orkut! I messaged him and asked for the money and was very happy when he replied by asking me my account details! By the time I replied, the partial luck ran out again! Orkut was out and FB was in!
Will let you know if I could contact him on FB!
Still I am thankful to my Junior who gave me the coordinates! Now of course I would have just asked for the location! Imagine travelling by the ship in the olden days without the GPS!
Apparently they used to use a device called the Sextant. Sextants were used by explorers like Edmund Shackleton to navigate across the oceans. This tool uses a two-mirror system to measure the angle of a celestial body such as the sun in relation to the horizon. Despite being relatively simple, sextants were incredibly accurate!
All it is is a device that measures the angle between two objects.
The sextant makes use of two mirrors. With this sextant, one of the mirrors is half-silvered, which allows some light to pass through. In navigating, you look at the horizon through this mirror. The other mirror is attached to a movable arm. Light from an object, let’s say the sun, reflects off this mirror. The arm can be moved to a position where the sun’s reflection off the mirror also reflects off mirror A and through the eyepiece. What you see when this happens is one object (the sun) superimposed on the other (the horizon). The angle between the two objects is then read off the scale!
What makes a sextant so useful in navigation is its accuracy. It can measure an angle with precision to the nearest ten seconds. (A degree is divided into 60 minutes; a minute is divided into 60 seconds.)!
If you understood the above then you are really clever! The direction on how it works was similar to the direction given by my junior! Destination attained though!
Now now do not worry! Just call Sam! In this case, Sam Bahadur aka Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw MC! He will show you the direction of victory!
Jai hind..
SHubh ratri…
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