Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Gerard Mercator´s Three Astrolabes
View through CrossRef
No scientific instruments made by Gerard Mercator (1512- 1594), the great cartographer, were known to exist, though it is recorded that he made astrolabes and other brass artefacts. In early 1992, the present author identified an unsigned astrolabe in Florence as being made in Mercstor's Duisburg workshop. By 1994, the 400th anniversary of Mercator's death, two fiírther astrolabes had been identified as being by his hand. They are in museums in Augsburg and Brno. This paper describes the mcthod of identifícation of these unsigned instruments, culminating in the discovcry of Mercator's monogram on the rim of the astrolabe in Brno.
Title: Gerard Mercator´s Three Astrolabes
Description:
No scientific instruments made by Gerard Mercator (1512- 1594), the great cartographer, were known to exist, though it is recorded that he made astrolabes and other brass artefacts.
In early 1992, the present author identified an unsigned astrolabe in Florence as being made in Mercstor's Duisburg workshop.
By 1994, the 400th anniversary of Mercator's death, two fiírther astrolabes had been identified as being by his hand.
They are in museums in Augsburg and Brno.
This paper describes the mcthod of identifícation of these unsigned instruments, culminating in the discovcry of Mercator's monogram on the rim of the astrolabe in Brno.
Related Results
Mercator: An R Package for Visualization of Distance Matrices
Mercator: An R Package for Visualization of Distance Matrices
Abstract
Summary
Unsupervised data analysis in many scientific disciplines is based on calculating distances between observatio...
Exploring the rates of astrolabes
Exploring the rates of astrolabes
Abstract
In the last decade, several studies of the stars on the rates of astrolabes have been carried out. My own approach to this problem has developed considerabl...
The provenance of the astrolabe collection at the national maritime museum
The provenance of the astrolabe collection at the national maritime museum
Abstract
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich belongs to a select group of institutions that house large collections of planispheric astrolabes. Only the collec...
Mercator: a pipeline for multi-method, unsupervised visualization and distance generation
Mercator: a pipeline for multi-method, unsupervised visualization and distance generation
Abstract
Summary
Unsupervised machine learning provides tools for researchers to uncover latent patterns in large-scale data, ba...
The Mercator projection on the sphere: a deduction without mathematical gaps
The Mercator projection on the sphere: a deduction without mathematical gaps
Map projection is the mathematical process of converting the Earth's surface, considered as a sphere or an ellipsoid, into a map. This conversion is performed by projecting the Ear...
European Astrolabes to ca. 1500: An Ordered List
European Astrolabes to ca. 1500: An Ordered List
Abstract
Research on medieval European astrolabes has hitherto been somewhat haphazard. Most pieces are unsigned and undated, many difficult to assign to a specific region. Some ea...
Astrolabes At Greenwich
Astrolabes At Greenwich
Abstract
The astrolabe is one of the most intriguing of all early scientific instruments. Invented by the Greeks, the design and construction of the astrolabe remain...
Representations of astrolabes in Western art
Representations of astrolabes in Western art
Abstract
The relatively infrequent depiction of astrolabes in works of art seems disproportionately small in relation to the large amount of instruments that have su...