astrolabe

• He felt like a 21st-century navigator compelled to use an astrolabe, contemptuous of the primitive instrument yet baffled as to how to use it properly. —  F ;SF; - vol 099 issue 06 - December 2000
• The astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840—[1440 D.W.]; and it was this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes. —  Christopher Columbus, entire
• Brass Astrolabe: Instruments such as the astrolabe were created to be both functional and beautiful and feature intricate engraving.
• The North Star appeared very high, as it does off Cape St. Vincent. The Admiral was unable to take the altitude, either with the astrolabe or with the quadrant, because the rolling caused by the waves prevented it. —  The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503
• Theon, a professor in the museum, wrote on the smaller astrolabe--the instrument then used to measure the star orbits--and on the rise of the Nile, a subject always of interest to the mathematicians of Egypt, from its importance to the husbandman. —  History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12)

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