Europe in the sixteenth century experienced a period of unprecedented vitality and innovation in the spheres of science and commerce. The Americas had been discovered and the colonizing nations had an urgent need for mathematical instruments for navigation and surveying. In 1540 the Elizabethan age saw the establishment of the precision instrument-making trade in London, a trade that would become world-famous in the succeeding two centuries. The mathematical instruments needed by astronomers, navigators, and surveyors owe ...
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Europe in the sixteenth century experienced a period of unprecedented vitality and innovation in the spheres of science and commerce. The Americas had been discovered and the colonizing nations had an urgent need for mathematical instruments for navigation and surveying. In 1540 the Elizabethan age saw the establishment of the precision instrument-making trade in London, a trade that would become world-famous in the succeeding two centuries. The mathematical instruments needed by astronomers, navigators, and surveyors owe much of their development to the work of the Flemish mathematician and astronomer, Gemma Frisius, and to the map and globe maker, Gerard Mercator, both of whom studied at Louvain. However it was Thomas Gemini who is credited with starting the London trade in 1540: his reputation came from making the plates for his own printing of the Anatomy of Vesalius, and the astrolabs he made and presented to Edward VI and Elizabeth I, which survive today. He was followed by Humphrey Cole, and other makers whose instruments have survived, including Ryther, Knyvyn, and Whitwell. This book first describes the context in which the Elizabethan trade began, and the influence of the instruments taken to Florence by Sir Robert Dudley in 1606. The second part catalogues in detail every surviving instrument from this period, signed and unsigned, that has been traced. The catalogue is accompanied by fine photographs which illustrate both the instruments and the techniques used to identify unsigned instruments.
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Seller's Description:
First edition. xiv+305 pages with index. Illustrated black and white and color. Cloth. As new. Fine in fine dustjacket. Europe in the sixteenth century experienced a period of unprecedented vitality and innovation in the spheres of science and commerce. The Americas had been discovered and the colonizing nations had an urgent need for mathematical instruments for navigation and surveying. The Elizabethan age saw the establishment of the precision instrument-making trade in London, from 1540, a trade that would become world-famous in the succeeding two centuries. The first of a group of London makers was an immigrant from Flanders, Thomas Gemini, succeeded by the Englishman, Humfrey Cole. It has proved possible to find over 100 surviving mathematical instruments, signed and unsigned, made by a group of London makers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This book describes these instruments in detail, together with the methods by which unsigned instruments are attributed. It tells how the skills of dividing and engraving on brass developed in parallel with the map-making and printing for which the Low Countries were the most important centre. There was already a demand in Elizabethan England for these skills, since accurate measurement was crucial to the professions of navigation, surveying, fortification, and gunnery. England, at war with Spain, eager to exploit the riches of the New World, and, at home, experiencing the re-distribution of monastic property to individual landowners, urgently needed these new professions.
