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Rhumb Line
line In navigation, a rhumb line, rhumb (/rʌm/), or loxodrome is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, that is, a path with constant bearing as measured relative to true north. Introduction[edit] The effect of following a rhumb line course on the surface of a globe was first discussed by the Portuguese mathematician Pedro Nunes in 1537, in his Treatise in Defense of the Marine Chart, with further mathematical development by Thomas Harriot in the 1590s.
As Leo Bagrow states:[4]"the word ('Rhumbline') is wrongly applied to the sea-charts of this period, since a loxodrome gives an accurate course only when the chart is drawn on a suitable projection. Finding the loxodromes between two given points can be done graphically on a Mercator map, or by solving a nonlinear system of two equations in the two unknowns m= cot β and λ 0. Методы решения прямой и обратной геодезических задач с высокой точностью[Methods for direct and inverse geodesic problems solving with high precision](PDF).
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