From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 17:04:21 +0800
To: tim@dierks.org (Tim Dierks)
Subject: Re: Domains, InterNIC, and PGP (and physical locations of hosts, to boot)
Message-ID: <m0taf3v-0008yVC@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:22 PM 1/11/96 -0800, you wrote:

>For what it's worth, you can use the mapping software at
><http://tiger.census.gov> to find your location fairly accurately; you may
>need another map to locate yourself, since the streets are unlabeled. I
>managed to figure out that I'm currently at latitude 37.3435 degrees,
>longitude -121.8925 degrees. I think that's correct to within about 100
>feet or so.
>
> - Tim
>
>Anyone with a GPS device, feel free to stop by; I'm in unit A2, and I've
>got homebrew in the fridge.


About 10 years ago, I bought a Loran unit from Heath, and (due to my
association with some people who did laser photoplotting for PC boards) had
a program written which generated a "LAT/LON" map plastic overlay.  Apply
over a USGS 7.5 minute map, and you can read LAT/LON directly.  (It only
needed to be photoplotted once, of course:  positive contact printing
duplicated it easily.)

Only one problem:  Since the width of longitude changes with latitude, a
given map overlay can only be "exactly" accurate at one latitude. Still, it
made estimating LAT/LON FAR easier.