Accession No

6839

Brief Description

Galilean sector, fake

Origin

Maker

Class

calculating; mathematics

Earliest Date

Latest Date

Inscription Date

Material

metal (brass)

Dimensions

sector: 45mm (width), 270mm (depth), 28mm (height); divider: 175mm (width), 85mm (depth), 13mm (height)

Special Collection

Provenance

Purchased from Tesseract July 2025. Purchased at auction by a private individual c. 2005.

Inscription

Description Notes

Galilean sector, fake.

Brass sector with divider. Sector itself is hinged at its top on a decorative knob, and has two screws on its reverse side, which are shaped like flower buds. There is an additional hole above one of the hinges on one side of the sector. The sector is engraved on its obverse side, moving from innermost to outermost, with arithmetic lines marked 20 to 260, geometric lines numbered 1 to 50, stereometric lines numbered 2 to 140, and metallic lines marked with abbreviations for various substances; ORO (oro, gold), PIO (piombo, lead), AR (argento, silver), RA (rame, copper), FE (ferro, iron), ST (stagno, tin), MA (marmo, marble), PIE (pietra, stone). The sector's arms are engraved identically, so that they mirror each other, and both end with a decorative piece. The reverse side is engraved, moving from innermost to outermost, with polygraphic lines numbered 3 to 15, tetragonic lines numbered 13 to 3, and an outer line marked twice from 18 to 0 and 17 to 1. Again, the sector's arms are mirrored, and end with a decorative piece.

The divider is marked with various scales, including degree scales 0-90˚. It is curved, and has two holes, one at either end, for attaching to the sector. It also includes a decorative element.

References

Events