Warner & Swasey Circular Dividing Engine
Warner & Swasey Circular Dividing Engine
Usage conditions apply
- Description
- Dividing engines scribed the fine scales traced along the edges of mathematical, navigational, and astronomical instruments. From the time of Englishman Jesse Ramsden in the late eighteenth century, free-standing dividing engines with the advance or the tracer driven by a carefully controlled screw were used by scientific instrument makers (for an example of Ramden's dividing engine, see MA.215518).
- In 1893, the U.S. Naval Observatory ordered a new meridian circle from the Cleveland firm of Warner &Swasey. The instrument required metal circles, 26 1/2" inches diameter, divided to two minutes of arc (10,800 divisions). To create scales of sufficient precision, Ambrose Swasey designed this circular dividing engine. It would be used at Warner & Swasey at least into the 1950s, and was given to the Smithsonian in 1974 along with documentation (see record MA.313774.02 and MA.313774.03) and a box of parts (MA> 313774.22)
- References:
- Accession file 313774.
- C. Evans,Precision Engineering: An Evolutionary View, Bedford: Cranfield, 1987.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- dividing engine
- date made
- 1895-1896
- maker
- Warner & Swasey Company
- place made
- United States: Ohio, Cleveland
- Measurements
- overall: 64 in x 54 in x 54 in; 162.56 cm x 137.16 cm x 137.16 cm
- ID Number
- MA.334398
- catalog number
- 334398
- accession number
- 313774
- Credit Line
- Gift of Warner & Swasey Company
- subject
- Ruling and Dividing Engines
- Mathematics
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Mathematics
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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