Navigation by the stars

Just as twentieth century compasses had almost completely taken my world by storm, I found that sextants, more specifically bubble sextants, were being used for celestial navigation of aircraft right until the middle of the Cold War! Yes, that's correct: navigation in aeroplanes by heavenly bodies. Here is Commander Weems demonstrating, and here also is an early 1920s example of such a device. A skilled pilot was required to keep the plane steady whilst measurements were being taken, and on early commercial flights, the pilot would turn on a special light to convey to customers his wish for them to cease their centre-of-gravity-upsetting meandering and be still for a while. This system was mainly used over sea; pre-Second World War air navigation over land involved pilots trying to follow roads and railways, looking out for the occasional inscription of a placename on a roof, and occasionally taking a brief stop at a farm to ask the way. Of course, it all got a lot more high-tech during the war when black-outs made things somewhat tricky, and an innovative fervour produced rather more swish-looking sextants, a modification of sun-compasses termed an astrocompass, gyro-stabilised distant reading repeater magnetic compasses, compasses with bomb-sights attached...