Instrument Traverse Nomogram (номограмма инструментального хода) Review / HowTo

The instrument traverse nomogram, made in the 1980s in the USSR. This is an english version of the номограмма инструментального хода.
This is episode 34 of my video series about calculating devices.
End song inspired by "Hotter Than a Molotov" by The Coup.
Chris Staecker webarea: cstaecker.fairfield.edu/~cstae...

[@pafnutiytheartist]

Explanation for Паспорт 2.317.002 ПС: Passport for an product, usually a tool means technical documentation, specifying what it does what capabilities it has, possibly what patents it uses and what standards it meets. Not particularly interesting, unless you have access to Soviet product passport databases or need your equipment to meet certain Soviet standards.

[@drleroux9876]

Interesting time to get recommended this.

[@12...]

That alternate system of angles (starting at the top and going clockwise) has a lot of advantages. For one thing, it's more intuitive since it works just like a clock. And it makes trig functions nicer. TAN(angle) is now x/y rather than y/x, for instance.

[@mygills3050]

Tan not being hypotenuse slope? Weird. I mean, I understand, but weird.

[@qxtr5853]

Thank you so much for doing the research on russian pronunciation and all of that! Most creators don't bother and just go with gut feeling.

[@JohnHoranzy]

Just found one on eBay for $30, shipping included from Poland. Will be nice in my collection. Thanks for the post and all the Trig information about this.

[@FlyingBoxHead]

Much like the aircrafts and some other equipment exported to other soviet-aligned countries; things like instrument panels, warnings, and literature were printed/produced in English as it was a common trade language making it cheaper and less tedious to get out to their friends in the field. Likely is the case here.

[@Maazin5]

Binge watching all your videos. Love your narration! Funny, informative, and creative

[@tombouie]

Thks, I likes the way you convey complex/cryptic subjects so concisely/clearly to regular folks. Oh !Look-Up-Tables Rule!

[@ChrisStaecker]

Look-up tables are seriously underrated. My favorite is the Monkey Multiplier.

[@herosstratos]

The full circle of 6000 units (~ 2 × pi × 1000) was used in Warsaw-Pact military, 6400 mils are used in Nato countries. N. b.: It was common for Soviet artillery officers to have notches in their cap visors for measuring heading angles.

[@BillRicker]

YES. And Sweden used 6300 to not be same as either noisy neighbor. I have a couple items in NATO Mils and a couple in WARPAC Mils. I need to get a Swedish 6300 protractor or something to complete my set of Instruments of Math Instruction.

[@dancoroian1]

Great Russian pronunciation! I was impressed given that you seem to be American

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks! I’m from Boston, but I spent some time in Kazakhstan.

[@RobleViejo]

@@ChrisStaecker What do you think of the current situation? Will the megalomaniacs riding nukes on both sides kill us all? Im South American and Im more afraid of a Nuclear Holocaust than most United Statesians, In social networks they are literally asking for nukes. Is insane, people think this is a movie or something....

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@RobleViejo No predictions about what will happen, but I believe nuclear armament by the USA and USSR was one of the great moral failings in our history. In the USA it's mostly left the public eye, but these systems which are capable of destroying everything are very much still operational.

[@yep_2431]

Your channel is such a hidden gem. It should of blown up for real, you're hilarious bro

[@evilfish456]

Thank you algorithm gods! These kind of videos are heroin to my mind!

[@rogerrabbit80]

All Hail Algorithm, the Great and Powerful!

[@someonespadre]

In Land Surveying calculations Y is North, and X is east. At least in the US there are 4 quadrants, angles are measured from north or south, examples: N 45° E, S 45° E, S 45° W, N 45° W (quadrant bearings). This simplified figuring reverse directions before calculators. S 45° W is 180° from N 45° E. We use degrees, minutes and seconds. The Y coordinate is called Northing, the X coordinate is called Easting. The difference between 2 Eastings is called departure, the difference between Northings is called latitude. Cosine bearing times horizontal distance equals latitude, Sine bearing times horizontal distance equals departure. It looks like this machine has a precision of 1 meter which is probably good enough for artillery. It looks like the angles are divided down to 0.05 BDP which is about 0.30° or 18 minutes of arc (52 cm at 100M). Usually graphic scales are interpolated to half their marks so about 0.5M and 0.025 BPD. I bet it could be used in reverse, knowing the coordinates of the target (which they do by triangulation from 2 points) and coordinates of the gun you could read direction and distance gun to target.

[@BillRicker]

in different eras, the US Coast Artillery Corps and allied portions of CoE used North 0° and South 0° azimuths ! ( Coast Artillery had different X,Y grid projections that standard Army maps as well because of their peculiar needs.)

[@roedergk]

I love these videos!

[@tensortab8896]

Looks a bit like the aiming circle we used for aiming mortars back in the 70s.

[@DaveMeuleman]

Can't believe I just found your channel! Cheers from a fellow math lover!

[@saasrus]

I was really surprised to see soviet piece of splendor on this channel. I can't believe in 21th sentry someone calculated that war is profitable. Life of regular person never cost much in such calculations.

[@Matthew-ju3nk]

Dude! You find some of the coolest stuff! And, as a child of the 80s myself, I found this presentation particularly funny. I am a civil engineer and I have always had great appreciation for the old-school ways of doing things. I was introduced to nomograph‘s back in college and I have had a great appreciation for these mechanical/graphical/rule-of-thumb methodologies ever since. Rock on! One other observation: do you think those odd Russian units around the compass are designation of minutes as used in navigation? That would seem to make sense to me.

[@deezynar]

It does trigonometric calculations. Jerome S. Meyer (b.1895 - d.1975) was an American who wrote prolifically on many subjects, including mathematics, throughout the middle of the twentieth century. Mr. Meyer invented a chart that's very similar to this one and was published in two of his books. Its first appearance was in "Fun With Mathematics", published in 1952. It was also included in "More Fun With Mathematics", 1963. The chart provides a very graphic way to solve trigonometric problems.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks for the tip- I'll check it out

[@BillRicker]

@@ChrisStaecker as i mentioned in email recently, part of the utility of mils in the field is making small angle trig easy, it's mental arithmetic. φ (mils) * range (kilometres) = offset (metres) thanks to the sin φ = φ (radians) small-angle approximation, with km:1000m ratio and 2×π both being baked into the 6400 mils in a circle ≅ 2×π×10³. This device is a nomographic calculator for large angle mils trigonometry (in WAR-PAC 6000 mils ≅2×π Radians ) and direct-reading Pythagorean x²+y²=z² (wherein it's similar to the E-6B Flight Computer (2D Slide-rule) used in aviation for dead-reckoning from the 1930s to present, and also seen in ST:TOS!) (It is i fear little known outside of 1930s-1960s EE circles, the fact that many trig sliderules can be (ab)used to do X,Y ↔ r, θ transforms with nearly direct reading; but this них and E-B6 are indeed easier if bulkier.) I'm wondering if the instructions describe using it WITH an Instrument on a Traverse, or describe using its arm as the gnomon/alidade of a Plane Table to fully do the traverse without optical instrument? I would expect a ridge or pop-up sights on the arm if the latter, so i'm presuming this is an accessory for a Theodolite, Aiming Circle, or BCT.

[@capolaya]

The compass thing divides 360 degrees like on an analog clock would do. So maybe that is the reason on using these special units? Oh, and First.

[@ChrisStaecker]

I think it was for easy interoperability with milliradians. Wikipedia has a decent article about this, and the difference between NATO and Warsaw Pact units. But I didn't want to get into that in the video.

[@amoledzeppelin]

IRL, I heard these BDPs referred to as just "minutes", because there are 60 of them. And 5 "minutes" is an "hour", because there are 12 of them in the circle.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Sounds reasonable- I've never heard anything about them really.

[@cogwheel42]

The first time you said НИХ, I thought exactly what you showed later

[@sidmarx7276]

We precalculate observable stars at twilight with a clumsy and inaccurate HO 2021 "Starfinder." I was forced to part with my simpler and more elegant Croatian "Identifikator Zviezda" which has only one revolving disc. This shows both hemispheres by displaying stars in red or blue respectively, and shows every available star. Bulkier but also elegant is the Russian "star globe," a boxed model of the celestial sphere.

[@xtusvincit5230]

What if you called BDPs minutes?

[@MoonRock-ij8ni]

can you not recommend these videos to me at 120 am please. I can't stop

[@Xsiondu]

A bulletproof nomogram is very useful in America.

[@spinecho609]

are you from the american midwest?

[@ChrisStaecker]

Boston!

[@OprichnikStyle]

i bet they're still using it today

[@MarvelDcImage]

Why in English? Anyone?

[@icecreamsundae1038]

Well not everyone knows Russian, I suppose.

[@gustavgnoettgen]

Maybe it's an international version, for soviet countries that didn't speak Russian themselves. But I guess then it shouldn't be uncommon for soviet military gear in general?

[@svejksoldjer]

@@icecreamsundae1038 military aid exports for africa, maybe - 1987...

[@ElKudesnitsa]

Maybe they tried to export it as non-military good. It's 1987, Perestroika at it's peak.

[@AClockworkWizard]

@@gustavgnoettgen The Russians were and remain an empire. If someone didn't speak Russian, they'd be colonized until they did. This is likely for export to English-speaking Soviet-aligned or third world countries.

[@haramanggapuja]

Translation not bad. Only leave out articles and use many big words like Stalin era speech. You learn this way to talk, you avoid Organs come house middle of night take you away. But yeah, it does sound pretty, well, lame. It took me a decade to figure out how to talk like that. Now, not only do I look like Trotsky, I sound like him too. Crush all Trotskyist numbers! Use Iron Felix! All peoples now stakhanovite!

[@miszcz310]

7:55"why Soviet union would export military equipment to USA" man at that time Soviet union was not even third world. It was like middle ages or lower (standard of living), also this is after meetings of USA president and Soviet union first secretary on how to disassemble Soviet union without war. So basically it is just for any kind of money they could get.

[@StephenRansom47]

🥹 I love this channel … “Don’t Go Changing…” Billy Joel