Protractor Signed by Delure

Object Details

Delure, Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas

Description

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.

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.

References:

Nicolas Bion, Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instruments de mathematique (Paris, 1709), 25–27.

Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and David Lindsay Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 166–168.

Maya Hambly, Drawing Instruments: 1580–1980 (London: Sotheby's Publications, 1988), 120–121.

Jean-Dominique Augarde, "La fabrication des instruments scientifiques du XVIIIe siècle et la corporation des fondeurs," in Christine Blondel et al., eds., Studies in the History of Scientific Instruments (London, 1989), 62–63.

Reference:

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).

Location

Currently not on view

ca 1720

ID Number

MA.316930

accession number

228694

catalog number

316930

Object Name

protractor

Physical Description

brass (overall material)

Measurements

overall: .1 cm x 11 cm x 7 cm; 1/32 in x 4 11/32 in x 2 3/4 in

place made

France: Île-de-France, Paris

See more items in

Medicine and Science: Mathematics

Science & Mathematics

Protractors

National Museum of American History

subject

Protractor

Mathematics

Record ID

nmah_904309

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a5-12ae-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa