Protractor Signed by Delure
date: label: date made
content: ca 1720
name: label: maker
content: Delure, Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas
notes: label: Description
content: This brass semicircular protractor is graduated by single degrees and marked by tens, from left to right and from right to left, from 10° to 180°. The degree lines are probably stamped rather than engraved by hand and thus represent a notable increase in workmanship over MA.326978 and MA.316861. Higher levels of accuracy were not reached until machine division was achieved by instrument makers such as Jesse Ramsden, who worked approximately fifty years after this protractor was manufactured.
label: Description
content: The inner edge of the base of the protractor is slanted, and there is a notch at the origin point. The base carries a maker's mark: Delure À Paris. The protractor is very similar to one depicted in the famous manual on mathematical instruments by Jean-Baptiste Delure's son-in-law, Nicolas Bion. The protractor dates to about 1720. It was purchased in 1959 from the estate of Henry Russell Wray via an auction conducted by Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Nicolas Bion, <I>Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instruments de mathematique</I> (Paris, 1709), 25–27.
label: Description
content: Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and David Lindsay Roberts, <I>Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000</I> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 166–168.
label: Description
content: Maya Hambly, <I>Drawing Instruments: 1580–1980</I> (London: Sotheby's Publications, 1988), 120–121.
label: Description
content: Jean-Dominique Augarde, "La fabrication des instruments scientifiques du XVIIIe siècle et la corporation des fondeurs," in Christine Blondel et al., eds., <I>Studies in the History of Scientific Instruments</I> (London, 1989), 62–63.
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: Sotheby & Company, Catalogue of a Collection of Scientific Instruments, the Property of the Late Henry Russel Wray, London, 1959 (a copy of the catalogue is in the accession file).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Paris
topic: label: Subject
content: Protractor
label: Subject
content: Mathematics
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
label: See more items in
content: Science & Mathematics
label: See more items in
content: Protractors
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MA.316930
label: accession number
content: 228694
label: catalog number
content: 316930
objectType: label: Object Name
content: protractor
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .1 cm x 11 cm x 7 cm; 1/32 in x 4 11/32 in x 2 3/4 in