 The Davis's quadrant |
Mathematical instruments from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are exhibited in this room. During this period, the precision instrument industry was extraordinarily well developed in England, France and Germany, while Italy remained almost untouched by this progress. This explains why the instruments of the Lorena Museum of Physics were for the most part purchased abroad. However, the promoters of the Museum established a workshop for their construction, in which Galgano and Felice Gori were to become the distinguished craftsmen of excellent instruments such as those displayed here. Progress in the precision instrument industry was made possible by the perfection of tools used to mark the graduated divisions on the edges, which led to the construction of machines for division, such as those designed and built by the Duke de Chaulnes (1714-69) in France, and contemporaneously by Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800) in England. |