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Two Mariner's Astrolabes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

Derek J. Price
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Extract

The first scientific instrument to be designed specifically for use at sea was the mariner's astrolabe. The cross-staff or Jacob's staff had been used by astronomers since the Middle Ages, and the magnetic compass used by navigators had long been familiar as an aid to land travel, a means of setting portable sundials, and in the east, a device for divination.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 1956 , pp. 338 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1956

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References

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1 This earliest cross-staff, made by Walter Arsenius at Louvain in 1571 is now at the British Museum (Accession No. 866–30–1; No. 417 in my catalogue of their collection). It is unfortunately incomplete, only the main staff remaining; this is made in two sections of wood covered with brass sheet on which the scales are engraved; total length 139·2 cms.Google Scholar

2 I have given a complete check-list and summary of all known astrolabes in Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, Nos. 32 & 33, 1955–56.Google Scholar

3 Details of the six specimens known to DrGunther, R. T. were published in his Astrolabes of the World (Oxford, 1932). Vol. 2, pp. 524–534.Google ScholarA seventh specimen is illustrated by Per Collinder in A History of Marine Navigation, London, 1954, Fig. 13.Google Scholar

4 These reference numbers are from my International Checklist of Astrolabes, cited above. Numbers below 399 are identical with those used by Gunther, Astrolabes of the World.Google Scholar

5 This instrument figured by Per Collinder is in the collection of Baron Essen, Skokloster Castle, Sweden. I have been unable to trace it, but the photograph shows that it is strikingly similar in design to the semicircular instrument at Kronborg; it has the same mark of a lozenge of fleurs-de-lys and might well be from the same workshop.Google Scholar

6 Diego Ribero's drawing is reproduced by Franco, S. G.Catálogo Crítico de Astrolabios existentes in España, Madrid 1945, Fig. 53 facing p. 349.Google Scholar