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Brass sextant signed Eigens Fabrikat 1126 Germany second half 19th cent
$3,386.96
£2,479.46
€2,800
CA$4,633.68
A$4,898.99
CHF 2,632.58
MX$58,837.63
NOK 32,964.61
SEK 30,165.05
DKK 21,328.03
About the Item
Brass sextant signed Eigens Fabrikat 1126, German manufacture of the second half of the 19th century and housed in its original mahogany wood box with brass handle, hinges, and locking hooks. Silver flap and vernier, rosewood handle, 3 colored glasses for fixed mirror and 4 for movable mirror, two telescopes, 1 filter, vernier graduated from 0 to 130°, index and horizon mirror. Box size cm 27 x 26.5 x 13 - 10.6 x 10.4 x 5.2 in. Conservation status: good, working and complete with base for stand made of custom wood and brass.
The last photo is the gift box.
The words "Eigenes Fabrikat," engraved on some late 19th-century German sextants, do not identify a specific manufacturer, but literally mean "own manufacture." This formula was used by craft or small machine shops in the German-speaking area that made nautical instruments without a structured trademark.
The sextant is an ancient astronomical instrument used for measuring the height of a star (e.g., the Sun): one places the instrument in a vertical plane and, looking through the aiming device, aims at the horizon line visible through the unsilvered half of the fixed mirror. Moving the alidade, with which the mirror is integral, causes the light rays coming from the star and subsequently reflected by the moving mirror and the silvered half of the fixed mirror to be sent back by the latter in the direction of observation: if you look through the aiming device you can see the image of the star, obtained by double reflection, coincide with the horizon line. The height of the astro is expressed by the angle whose value is read on the graduated scale. The filter is used when the star to be looked at is the Sun. It was Sir Isaac Newton who invented the principle of double reflection in navigation instruments, but this research was never published. Subsequently, two men, independently of each other, discovered the sextant around 1730 : John Hadley (1682-1744), an English mathematician, and Thomas Godfrey, (1704-1749), an American inventor. But it was not until 1758 that Admiral John Campbell carried out a series of offshore trials to test a new method that relied on lunar distance as a means of calculating longitude. This was how the sextant was developed. Initially made of brass, they had scales divided with great precision by mathematicians who made scientific instruments.
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