Europe's Age Of Discovery
Dragons were often used by ancient map makers to depict the unknown, and places that hadn’t yet been explored. The only way to clear up the maps and discover new things, was exploration. Europe's Age of Discovery which began in the early 15th century and ended around the early 17th century changed world and paved the way for the modern world as we know it. Explorers traveled the seas, discovering new places and routes for trade and travel making daring journeys out across the seas and then navigating their way back home to report on their discoveries. This paper will discuss will discuss the discovery of these new places and the tools that made those discoveries possible as well as give some background on those tools and how they function.
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At the time of the Age of Discovery nautical navigation was just starting to become advanced enough to allow for the amazing discoveries that happened during the period. The compass and astrolabe were some of the most advanced tools of the time and helped immensely with the problems they faced. A huge problem of the time was finding a ship's longitude and the only way that they had to do it was by using the ships speed and the time that they had been traveling to calculate their distance from the point where they had set off. They used a rope with a series of knots down its length in measured intervals and then threw it out in front of them. By measuring the time it took for each knot to pass them. They then used a type of clock which was the element that caused the most error as clocks at the time were very unreliable to measure their speed and from that could determine longitude. This was a very difficult method of finding longitude and required much more work and time than using both the compass and astrolabe, but with those tools a ship and its navigators could find all the information they needed to have a successful voyage. Not to mention in the later years of the Age of Discovery the “Invention of the chronometer, a reliable clock whose spring mechanism was not affected by the pitching of the waves, permitted an accurate reading of local time, making determination of longitude easier.” So though finding longitude was still a problem, with the astrolabe, compass, and the information they provided, it was totally possible and a skilled and careful navigator could get it
At the time of the Age of Discovery nautical navigation was just starting to become advanced enough to allow for the amazing discoveries that happened during the period. The compass and astrolabe were some of the most advanced tools of the time and helped immensely with the problems they faced. A huge problem of the time was finding a ship's longitude and the only way that they had to do it was by using the ships speed and the time that they had been traveling to calculate their distance from the point where they had set off. They used a rope with a series of knots down its length in measured intervals and then threw it out in front of them. By measuring the time it took for each knot to pass them. They then used a type of clock which was the element that caused the most error as clocks at the time were very unreliable to measure their speed and from that could determine longitude. This was a very difficult method of finding longitude and required much more work and time than using both the compass and astrolabe, but with those tools a ship and its navigators could find all the information they needed to have a successful voyage. Not to mention in the later years of the Age of Discovery the “Invention of the chronometer, a reliable clock whose spring mechanism was not affected by the pitching of the waves, permitted an accurate reading of local time, making determination of longitude easier.” So though finding longitude was still a problem, with the astrolabe, compass, and the information they provided, it was totally possible and a skilled and careful navigator could get it