Mural Quadrant (replica)
notes: label: Description
content: Willebrord Snell (1580-1626) was a Dutch mathematician who, having gained a professorship at the University of Leiden, acquired a large quadrant suitable for geodetic triangulation, began measuring distances in northern Europe, and obtained the first modern estimate of the size of the earth. Snell’s quadrant was made by Wilhelm Janszoon Blaeu, the Dutch cartographer who had worked with Tycho Brahe and was familiar with his instruments. This reproduction of Snell’s quadrant was made in the early 1960s, for display in the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History).
label: Description
content: Ref: W. Snell, <i>Eratosthenes batavvs</i> (Leiden, 1617).
label: Description
content: Hans Raeder, Elis Stromgren and Bengt Stromgren, <i>Tycho Brahe’s Description of His Instruments and Scientific Work as Given in Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica (Wandesburgi, 1598)</i> (Copenhagen, 1946), pp. 29-31.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.326989
label: catalog number
content: 326989
label: accession number
content: 260634
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Mural Quadrant (replica)