FABRI, Ottavio L’Uso del la Squadra Mobile con la Quale per Teorica et per practica. Venice Francesco Barilleti 1598
First edition of this surveying treatise describing Fabri’s interpretation of a theodolite, an instrument similar to the modern graphometer. Measurement units of 21 cities (principally though not entirely Italian) are given.The first surveying instruments were derived from measuring devices employed by astronomers and navigators. In particular, the makers adopted the alidade and circular angle-scale found on the backside of astrolabes, adding to the instrument a socket by which the user could mount the instrument upon a tripod or a staff to hold it steady in the field. By adding a magnetic compass for taking bearings, this became the circumferentor, a semicircular modification of which was called a graphometer. Whether by combining circumferentors in vertical or horizontal planes, or by adapting the older instrument known as the torquetum, the theodolite evolved as a universal measuring instrument.The preliminaries of this work appear to have been reset at least once during printing in order to include a new dedicatee. They thus vary considerably from one copy to the next. The present copy contains (among others) the dedication to Guerini as described by Riccardi, and conforms closest to the copy described by Riccardi: it differs in having some (though not all) of the misnumberings corrected. The Columbia copy has instead a dedication to Giovanni Francesco Gandino. A copy described by Gilhofer & Ranschburg (Catalogue 95) some years ago included a dedication to yet another grandee, Cardinal Aldobrandini. Although Riccardi calls for the folding plate, it is most likely an insertion from a later edition: a printed date on the plate in the present copy has been effaced, though records of copies which contain it show it to be 1607. There is no plate in the Columbia copy or that described by Gilhoffer.
* BM STC Italian, p. 241; Kiely, Surveying Instruments, pp. 152-54 and bibliography 165 (1615 ed.) Singer, History of Technology III.627.
$US2850
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