Distances and bearings between points

[Santi]

Back when I was at the Nautical College, I realized that when using rhumb line for calculation we were using a spheroidal model, but while using great circle a sphere was used. I asked my teacher about this, and then he stared at me as if he never noticed this thing before. He was like Eerrrr... ummmm... etc. A week or so later (this happened before the Wikipedia times)he came back with a paper with the vincenty method, and a face telling "you are not going to pass my subject this year". And in fact I didn't passed the subject that year, although I was quite competent in doing all kind of nautical calculations. I even had programmed my 48sx at that time.
So I can tell that I have a bittersweet memory of mr Vincenty...