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Burnished brass sextant signed Heath Co Eltham London second half 19th cent.
$3,870.81
£2,833.67
€3,200
CA$5,295.63
A$5,598.85
CHF 3,008.67
MX$67,243
NOK 37,673.84
SEK 34,474.34
DKK 24,374.89
About the Item
Black burnished brass sextant, signed Heath
Co Ltd . Eltham London, Hezzanith Pat 17840, second half of the 19th century, housed in its original mahogany box, with locking hooks, retractable handle, and brass hinges, with sextant locking device inside the box and complete with key. Box size cm 27.5 x25 x 14 - 10.8 x 9.8 x 5.5 in Silver flap and nonius, wooden handle, 3 colored glasses for fixed mirror and 4 for movable mirror, three telescopes one of which is long, spare optics, two filters, a microscope for reading the nonius graduated from 0 to 150°, index and horizon mirror. Perfectly working. State of preservation: very good.
Complete with custom-made stand made of wood and brass.
The last photo is the gift box.
Heath
Co. was one of Britain's most renowned manufacturers of scientific and nautical instruments. Founded in London around 1845 by George Heath, it continued the family tradition already active in optical and navigational instruments since the 18th century. During the nineteenth century the company distinguished itself by producing sextants, octants, compasses, barometers, and precision instruments for the British navy and merchant marine. Beginning in the 1880s the firm assumed the name Heath
Co. Ltd. and moved to the New Eltham plant. The brand name "Hezzanith"-a contraction of Heath's Zenith-was introduced to identify high-precision sextants produced with advanced techniques and prized for their mechanical and optical quality. The company remained active until the mid-20th century, when it was gradually absorbed by other companies in the industry, such as W. F. Stanley
Co.
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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