Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- measuring instrument
- Image
- Cuadrante marino.jpg
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- Commons category
- Quadrants (instrument)
- replaces
- astrolabe
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
A large frame quadrant at the Beijing Ancient Observatory. It was constructed in 1673.
A quadrant is an instrument used to measure angles up to 90°. Different versions of this instrument could be used to calculate various readings, such as longitude, latitude, and time of day. It was first proposed by Ptolemy as a better kind of astrolabe. Several different variations of the instrument were later produced by medieval Muslim astronomers. Mural quadrants were important astronomical instruments in 18th-century European observatories, establishing a use for positional astronomy.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “quadrant” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.