Precision measurements have been made of the scales on a group of European astrolabes manufactured between c. 1450 and 1659. Little is known from documentary sources of the construction and scale-dividing methods used by late-medieval craftsmen. The measurements of the present group of twenty-four scales have been analysed statistically, so that the parameters of accuracy expected of them can be deduced. Scribing marks and other features give clear indications of how the scales were constructed.

(1984). Tycho brahe in china: the Jesuit mission to Peking and the iconography of European instrument-making processes. Annals of Science: Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 417-443.

Mary Somerville (1780-1872), after whom Somerville College Oxford was named, was the first woman scientist to win an international reputation entirely in her own right, rather than through association with a scientific brother or father. She was active in astronomy, one of the most demanding areas of science of the day, and flourished in the unique British tradition of Grand Amateurs, who paid their own way and were not affiliated with any academic institution. Mary Somerville was to science what Jane (...) Austen was to literature and Frances Trollope to travel writing. Allan Chapman's vivid account brings to light the story of an exceptional woman, whose achievements in a field dominated by men deserve to be very widely known. (shrink)

(1995). Out of the meridian: John Bird's equatorial sector and the new technology of astronomical measurement. Annals of Science: Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 431-463.

The graduated arcs of some seventeenth and early eighteenth- century observatory instruments have been examined in order to estimate the accuracy of the angular divisions. In addition, the design of the frameworks supporting the graduated arcs has been studied from existing instruments and from contemporary engravings. The analysis attempts to assess the skills of the craftsman rather than the perspicacity of the astronomer.