NAVIGATION

Astronomy, Navigation and Surveying were for long the three principal domains of the practical mathematical sciences and their instruments represented contemporary standards of precision and accuracy. The makers of these instruments set goals in precision for the rest of the trade and through instruments of navigation and surveying dispensed new standards of accuracy in practical problems. Their instruments may now be enjoyed in aesthetic terms for their simplicity of line, attention to detail and restrained decoration, but they also have conceptual and practical functions. They rest on mathematical techniques founded on theories of geometry, and on a conviction that technological problems could be managed by mathematical principles in order to provide a solution to an immediate practical problem.