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Subject: Fwd: MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS
From: Brian Whatcott (betwys@XXX.XXX)
Date: Thu Jun 27 2002 - 07:03:05 EDT
I am relaying David's note on Rete as germane to readers of
History of Astronomy, and the Navigation list, I expect.
Brian Whatcott
>From: Kingabumax@XXX.XXX
>Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 06:30:06 EDT
>Subject: MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS
>To: "Rete" <rete@XXX.XXX>
>
>To colleagues in the History of Science, Medieval Islamic
>Studies, Medieval European Studies, and the History of
>Scientific Instruments ...
>
>Subject: Medieval Islamic and European Astronomical Instruments
>
> From Prof. David A. King
>Institute for History of Science
>Johann Wolfgang Goethe University
>D 60054 Frankfurt am Main
>em: king@XXX.XXX
>or: kingabumax@XXX.XXX
>Tel. +49-69-7982-2754 / -2337 / -2338
>Fax: -3275
>
>
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>There is now an updated website giving information about
>research on medieval Islamic and European astronomical
>instruments that has been conducted in Frankfurt over the
>past 10 years.
>
>Some of this activity has been made possible by generous
>support from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
>
>The new website features a list of publications, works in
>press, and works in preparation by members of the Frankfurt
>team, past and present. In these publications we have tried
>to use astronomical instruments as historical sources within
>their cultural and geographical contexts. Thus, for example,
>it was possible to show that the astrolabe supposedly dedicated
>by Regiomontanus to his patron Cardinal Bessarion in 1462
>but branded fake, was one of close to a dozen from the same
>or closely-related workshops, some even by the same maker.
>Again, it has been possible to show that various medieval
>European instruments such as the quadrans vetus were known
>already in 9th-century Baghdad. In the case of the elusive
>navicula de Venetiis we have been able to show that all of
>the components were known in the same milieu, as was a
>more complicated instrument for timekeeping by the stars
>for any latitude. New evidence from manuscripts establishes
>the context of three brass world-maps from 17th-century
>Iran bearing hightly-sophisticated grids preserving direction
>and (the sine of) the distance to Mecca at the centre firmly in
>earlier (10th and 11th century) Islamic mathematics. Some
>of the studies concentrate on the inscriptions (such as
>names of the zodiacal signs and months in regional Latin or
>local vernaculars), the geographical information explicit or
>implicit on instruments, and others treat the instruments
>within the general context of astronomical timekeeping or
>as historical works of art.
>
>There is also provisional table of contents (TOC) of the catalogue
>that has been in preparation for the past few years. This TOC can
>serve for the present and immediate future as an ordered list of
>instruments, arranged chronologically by provenance. I would
>be grateful for information on any early instruments that are
>not listed here.
>
>The information on instruments from after ca. 1500 was compiled
>about 10 years ago and in the main has not been touched since.
>The entries for such instruments in the TOC for later instruments
>have simply been picked up by the automatic TOC generator:
>for many of them there are no descriptions, and none are planned.
>Certain later sections of the catalogue/TOC have been made
>redundant anyway by recent publications by Gerard Turner (English
>Renaissance), Koenraad van Cleempoel (Flemish and Spanish
>Renaissance), and the forthcoming publication by S. R. Sarma
>(Indian instruments with inscriptions in Arabic-Persian-Sanscrit).
>
>The descriptions of instruments from before ca. 1500 are in
>reasonable shape but are not yet publishable. The long-term
>goal was/is to make the descriptions available, starting with
>early Islamic instruments (to 1200) and then the earliest
>European instruments. This will be done in small batches, and
>some sample descriptions will eventually be put on this site.
>
>For the rest there is still plenty of work to be done.
>Any serious researcher working on a specific group of
>instruments is welcome to inspect the materials available here
>or take over the descriptions of such a corpus of instruments.
>
>A major problem is the lack of adequate photographic
>documentation. Only a minority of museums are capable of
>preparing decent photos of instruments, and costs have
>skyrocketed. See the site EPACT mentioned below for some
>good photos.
>
>More serious problems are: 1) the fact that funding for
>the project is virtually exhausted, and 2) the fact that most
>of the young scholars who have been trained here in
>the study of instruments have moved on.
>
>The website is:
>http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/fb13/ign/instrument-catalogue.html
>I hope that it will stimulate some serious interest in these
>"forgotten treasures of the Middle Ages”.
>
>Yours sincerely,
>David A. King
>
>
>
>IMPORTANT: The website
>EPACT: Scientific Instruments of Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
>http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/epact/
>provides illustrations and descriptions of European instruments
>in Oxford, Florence, London (BM) and Leiden
Brian Whatcott
Altus OK Eureka!
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