Re: GRADs in use? Message #18 Posted by db (martinez, ca.) on 18 May 2010, 1:07 a.m., in response to message #1 by Tim Wessman
when i was traveling i talked with surveyors from all over latin america, from europe and north africa, who had worked in saudi and antarctica. i had the same question and no one used grads.
i read once that the 360 deg circle / 90 deg quadrants are standard because of both nautical tradition, and that they can be divided up into so many kinds of even fractions before one needs to resort to minutes and seconds.
along with that; i can see why the compass rose is first divided into quadrants: toward and away from magnetic north, and toward sunrise or sunset. then you have half, third, ninth quadrants and half, quarter, eighth, third, sixth, twelfth, twenty-fourth, thirty-sixth, and even smaller fractions of the circle.
all those would have been useful until Precision Survey Solutions and hp50G came along.
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