The Problem with Early Navigation Tools

by Ryan Nagelhout

Overview

It’s fascinating to think about how people ever found their way around. For instance, how did people navigate hundreds or even thousands of years ago? They likely didn’t ask for directions, as they were all alone trying to explore uncharted territory. We’ve come a long way with navigation tools, whether it’s simply following a map or something a bit more advanced. Readers discover the history of navigation, from using the sun or stars to help find the way to advanced technology like GPS. This book demonstrates how important it is to learn from the mistakes and wrong turns—only bloopers and follies have helped us develop reliable methods to find our way home!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781482427783
Publisher:	Gareth Stevens Publishing
Publication date:	08/01/2015
Series:	Bloopers of Invention
Pages:	24
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	980L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

Table of Contents

Finding the Way 4

Sun and Stars 6

The Lead Line 8

Vikings on the Water 10

Using the Astrolabe 12

And Later, the Sextant 14

Using Magnets 16

Bad Maps 18

GPS 20

Glossary 22

For More Information 23

Index 24

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2015
Gr 2–4—Though he embeds some humorous missteps—each headed with an eye-catching "OOPS!"—into this set of reasonably coherent highlight reel-style accounts of how selected technological developments got their starts, Nagelhout makes more than a few problematic choices. Characterizing Otto Lilienthal's fatal crash and the Hindenburg disaster in Early Flying Machines as "bloopers" seems fatuous, for instance. Other entries seem shoehorned in, such as the abacus (accompanied by text describing the practice of counting on fingers as an "OOPS!"). Moreover, the author phones in a history of photography in Early Cameras, commenting that the first Kodak film was made from "something called cellulose" and quaintly warning that "if you lose a memory card or your computer breaks, you could lose all your digital photos." VERDICT Though readers hoping for disaster-centric edutainment will be disappointed, these histories do offer good overviews of their subjects, with a well-chosen mix of period photos and labeled diagrams to illustrate each high (or low) point.

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