Published by Adams, Schwartz & Evans, P.A. Asymptote ® 2001, Vol. 9 A Journal of Intellectual Property Law Issues No. 1 Advances in Navigation Map Our Future Animals Created with Genetically Engineered Homing Devices ——— Finding Our Way ——— efore Magellan circled the globe, symptote Review is now in its Before coming ashore eighteen-hundred before Alexander invaded Africa, ninth year of publication, and miles away on a small Caribbean island, even before our species painted the during that time its subscription Callahan used ingenuity, bravery and walls of caves, humankind and other animals had to find their way to A list has grown from a few incredible skill as a navigator to success- B hundred to over one thousand, five fully plot his course to safety. hunting grounds and home again. Fortunately, knowing how essential navigation is to her hundred. Of all the issues we have We recently asked Steve and his many children, Mother Nature imbued most published, the first issue in 1998 gener- colleague, Kathy Massimini, if they would complex animals with numerous navigational ated by far the most reader response and author an issue of Asymptote Review tools, such as the built-in compasses of interest. In it, we explored the validity of devoted to the history of navigation, and magnetite that she placed into the skulls of the old saying “necessity is the mother of they graciously agreed. This issue will be many migrators. Real-life shanghaied Lassies invention” with the story of Steve of great interest not only to the pilot, hiker have traveled hundreds of miles to find their Callahan, who in 1982 survived for 76 or sailor, but to anyone who is curious dog dishes again. Birds in covered boxes line days alone in an inflatable raft after his about how mankind learned to find his up to face south in the fall and north in the sloop was rammed by some unknown way about the Earth. We hope you spring. Aquatic creatures crowd a two-lane object and sank near the Canary Islands. enjoy it. highway to reproduction, with salmon and shad scurrying up the very streams of their infanthood to spawn while mature Anguilla eels slide out of European and North America long and in what direction. I first learned to rivers toward precise romantic rendevous in the navigate by looking over the side of a sailboat nebulous and meandering Sargasso Sea. to judge the speed of the water moving by, A publication of Humankind’s honing of the art and science following the swing of a compass, and plotting Adams, Schwartz & of navigation has proved crucial to our history, the boat’s position on a paper chart. But from the creation of our most powerful empires because the fluid roads on which mariners and Evans, P.A. to the geographic discoveries of our greatest flyers travel themselves move at unknowable Intellectual Property Lawyers explorers, but today the subject often seems rates, a navigator’s only reliable recourse is to ——— triangulate his position using very distant distant, historical, or so buried within our Patents, Trademarks & technological known objects world that we like the stars. In Copyrights the mid-1970s, I take it for The science of navigation often To request a free subscription to granted. Yet was shooting seems distant, historical, or so buried Asymptote Review, contact us at: when the very the sun with a word “naviga- within our technological world that we sextant and 2180 Two First Union Center tion” conjures take it for granted calculating my Charlotte, N.C. 28282 only quaint position thanks images of to spherical- Tel. (704) 375-9249 nineteenth century captains with sextants geometry tables that were created so fast- Fax (704) 375-0729 raised, we would be advised to remember that moving aircraft during the Second World War navigational skills are actually more critical could find their positions quickly. In two www.adamspat.com today than ever, whether we’re trying to keep hundred years, except for a few fledgling and another Exxon Valdez from making love to a often inaccurate electronic devices, little had reef, preventing a thousand airborne jets from changed in the fundamental ways we naviga- In this issue running into one another, or simply tracking a tors found our way around. Today, however, Finding Our Way ................................. 1 package being sent by UPS. we’ve entered a whole new era highly Navigation ........................................... 1 dependent on our electronically oriented world To find our way around the vast portions of History of Navigation ........................... 2 the world with no signs or landmarks, like the and the satellites that whirl around it. How did we get here and where are we going in the Potato Navigation ............................... 6 oceans and skies, we must grapple with Who We Are ........................................ 6 substantial challenges. We can “dead reckon” third millennium? by keeping track of how fast we move for how (See ‘The Ancients’ on page 2) Adams, Schwartz & Evans, P.A. w 2180 Two First Union Center, Charlotte, N.C. 28282 w (704) 375-9249 Asymptote Review The Ancients Sharpen Their Reading Skills (Continued from page 1) The aborigines and Pacific islanders were not alone in tuning into the natural world. HISTORY OF NAVIGATION No one knows how long Australian aborigines have traveled in accordance with Ancient Norse mariners found land by At a Glance following seabirds with beaks filled with fish. their ancient By the third millennium B.C., the Chinese had “song lines,” a complex method discovered the earth’s magnetism and won a Ancient Navigation fog-bound battle thanks to a magnetized needle of integrating that pointed dutifully south. In the Mediterra- geographic circa 2500 B.C. New Guinea explorers begin to features of the nean by 1000 B.C., Phoenicians created a settle in Pacific Islands. maritime empire by tracking the sun, from Asu landscape with or sunrise (giving rise to the name Asia) in the their history, circa 1000 B.C. Vikings reach and settle spirituality, myths east to Ereb or sunset (to evolve into Europe) Newfoundland, using an 8-point to the west. Homer’s Odyssey describes the and music. We do importance of circumpolar starts to ancient Norse compass. think, however, that as long as navigators, and by 600 B.C., Thales of Miletos was teaching navigators to use Ursa Minor (the circa 500 B.C. Periplus of Scylax, the oldest 4,500 years ago, “Little Dipper”) and the uniquely fixed north known pilot book, is used by the peoples of Oceania began star (Polaris) around which all the heavens Mediterranean navigators and rotate. Still, Heredotus was among the many pushing out from who, a couple centuries later, were still develops into the portolean New Guinea. By atlases of the Middle Ages. the time Magellan, supplementing heavenly information with soundings of the ocean bottom and “ooze on Drake, and Cook the lead.” 384–322 B.C. Aristotle divides the horizon into found them, they had long ago settled the a classical 8-wind system plus entire Pacific Basin without the benefit of Librarian Invents Leap Year & the solstitial points of sunrise compass or charts. Like the aborigines, these Calculates a Round World Pacific navigators learned to read natural and sunset. landmarks, but theirs were more fluid than In Africa and the Mediterranean, astronomy Australia’s hills and deserts. At sea, clouds and geometry became the navigator’s sharpen- circa 250 B.C. Eratosthenes accurately slow and build over islands. Creatures of the ing stone. Around 450 B.C., Oenopides calculates the circumference of deep and air inhabit known regions of the discovered that the ecliptic, which defines the the earth. oceans and travel along known migratory signs of the zodiac, lay at an angle of about 24 paths. Some birds hunt at sea but roost on degrees from the celestial equator, indicating the earth’s tilt on its axis. Eratosthenes, 2nd century B.C. Admiral Timosthenes of Rhodes land. Even the general patterns and specific librarian of the great library of Alexandria, designs a 12-point wind rose, shapes of multiple wave trains compose an intricate code that reveals predominant winds, further refined celestial calculations, mapped naming the winds after the distant storms, the strength and direction of 675 stars, and proposed a “leap day” in the countries from which they blow. current, and the bearing of land still well out of calendar every four years to make sure the sight. seasons would come out right. He also 190–120 B.C. Hipparchus of Nicaea catalogs discovered that the sun shone straight down a stars on a circular sphere with Perhaps the well on one day of the year, so on that day he most important measured a 7.2-degree sun shadow down celestial latitude and longitude, evolution in another well 787 miles north, allowing him to creating the astrolabe. navigational quite accurately calculate the circumference of expertise came as a round earth some 1,742 years before 150 B.C. A large model of the globe, navigators shifted Columbus sailed. showing four land masses, is their gaze from Spherical geometry also spawned virtually exhibited in Rome. terra firma to the heavens where the all future navigational inventions. Around 150 stars and planets B.C., Hipparchus melded Babylonian math with 100 B.C. Eight-sided Tower of the Winds never falter from Greek science to develop a spherical star chart is erected in Athens, with their predictable with latitude and longitude coordinates. emblems for Boreas (north), patterns. The Flattened out, this became the astrolabe, a star Kaikias (northeast), Burus navigators of computer and angle-measuring device. Oceania memo- Eventually, mariner’s astrolabes would become (east), Apeliotes (southeast), the standard shipboard tool carried by Notos (south), Lips (southwest), rized these patterns so well that they could tell which stars Magellan, Drake and Columbus.