National Affairs: Azimuth Project

It is easy to send a crew of unemployed huskies down into a ditch. More puzzling problems to Harry Hopkins and his Works Progress Administration are unemployed bookkeepers, engineers, accountants. Last week from Washington came word of a unique white-collar project in Philadelphia, which Mr. Hopkins described as of literally unestimable value to the world’s aerial and ocean navigators. The project: a complete set of Tables of Computed Altitude and Azimuth.

Computations by which navigators determine their position from sextant observations of the altitude (elevation above the horizon) and azimuth (true bearing by compass) of heavenly bodies may take up to 15 minutes. In airplanes traveling 200 m.p.h. such computations are out of date by the time they are made. The Navy’s Hydrographic Office published tables last year covering latitudes of 30 to 39 degrees, from which navigators could check their position in a few seconds.

Taken over by WPA under Hydrographic Office sponsorship, the Tables last week employed some 250 white-collar Philadelphia Reliefers, headed by eight non-Relief supervisors, including six mathematicians. With a $195,000 appropriation, WPA figures its workers will make 9,000,000 separate computations (each value being computed twice independently and then checked), fill five more volumes of tables with an average 300 pages in each, turn the whole over to the Hydrographic Office for publication next year.