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Amelia Earhart Search Forum => General discussion => Topic started by: Bill Mangus on October 29, 2018, 02:41:29 PM

Title: Inverting Eyepiece
Post by: Bill Mangus on October 29, 2018, 02:41:29 PM
Here's one possible chain of events regarding how the inverting eyepiece became associated with AE.

-- Nov-Dec 1939:  Sextant box found by or given to native worker by USS Bushnell crewmember.

-- Nov-Dec 1939:  Native worker discovers eyepiece in sextant box and having no use for it, throws it away, probably shortly after box comes into his possession.

-- April 1940:  Sextant box is now being used as storage or carrying case by work party member(s) who found the skull.  Box mistakenly left at 7-Site by work party after burying the skull.

-- September 1940:  Box found by GBG at 7-Site and mistakenly associated with Earhart

-- September 1940:  GBG returns to village with box and other artifacts.  GBG is told by someone that a piece GBG believes to be an inverting eyepiece, based on description he is given, had been found and thrown away, but doesn't hear, miss-understands or isn't told the when or where.  GBG assumes teller means that a member of party who first found/buried skull also found object (eyepiece) in sextant box and tossed it away.  GBG subsequently never asks or learns that box was carried to the site by the work party.  He had no reason to ask as he had already associated the box with the skeleton in his own mind.

I'm sure they might be other ways as well.
Title: Re: Inverting Eyepiece
Post by: Don White on October 29, 2018, 08:12:26 PM
Might there have been a spare eyepiece in the box that would still be there when the sextant was taken out to use?

Don White
Title: Re: Inverting Eyepiece
Post by: Ric Gillespie on October 30, 2018, 07:27:49 AM
Might there have been a spare eyepiece in the box that would still be there when the sextant was taken out to use?
Somebody familiar with sextant operation needs to check me on this, but it's my impression that the inverting eyepiece was an attachment that was stored in the box with, but not routinely attached to, the sextant.
Title: Re: Inverting Eyepiece
Post by: Bill Mangus on October 30, 2018, 08:25:07 AM
I read somewhere in the Forum, probably in the now locked sextant thread, that an inverting eyepiece is a separate attachment that flips or "inverts" the image the user sees so that the sky is up and the ground/ocean is down, as is normal.  Without it, the image the user sees is up-side-down -- sky below, ground/ocean above. 
Wherever I read it also says that experienced users didn't bother with it. 

So, yes I think it had its own compartment in the case and the Bushnell crewmember, being an experienced user, did not need it.

Addition:

Found it.  Read here:  https://tighar.org/wiki/Inverting_eye_piece_found_on_Nikumaroro

Title: Re: Inverting Eyepiece
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on October 30, 2018, 12:53:28 PM
... probably in the now locked sextant thread ...

Locking a thread only prevents adding to it.

You can still search it or browse through it.

I just logged out and viewed the Forum as a guest.  I could read the locked thread without any difficulty.