Surveyor's Cross

From Inventions

Current revision as of 10:17, 8 September 2010

Land surveyor's square

Historic Period

XVI secolo

Description

Instrument used by land surveyors for orthogonal alignments when measuring plots of land. It typically consisted of a vertical brass cylinder with either four or eight narrow slits that indicated, when looked through, the 90° or 45° directions.

Bibliographical Resources

Pomodoro, Giovanni, Geometria prattica tratta dagl'Elementi d'Euclide ed altri Auttori da Giovanni Pomo doro Venetiano Mathematico eccellentissimo descritta et dichiarata da Giovanni Scala Mathematico, Stefano de' Paulini, Roma, 1599. Scamozzi, Vincenzo, L’idea della architettura universale, Venezia, 1615, Parte I, Lib. II, Cap. VIII, p. 124: “il medesimo si potrà fare col squadro da Campagna, col quale comunemente gli Agrimensori isquadrano i campi”. Oddi, Muzio, Dello Squadro, Milano 1625.

Existing Instruments

- Museo Galileo, Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence
Firenze, Museo Galileo. Istituto di Storia della Scienza, Inv. 680.
Firenze, Museo Galileo. Istituto di Storia della Scienza, Inv. 681.

- Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, inv. 81005
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, inv. 62741
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, inv. 52076

Links (External)

http://www.dehilster.info/index.php?doc=http://www.dehilster.info/instrumenten/surveyors-cross/index.html (English)
http://www.ferris.edu/FACULTY/BURTCHR/sure110/notes/surveying_history.pdf (English)

Author of the entry: Filippo Camerota