Hammett’s Planisphere is a heavy paperboard chart used to determine the positions of stars at any given moment from latitude 40˚N. The circular base contains a celestial map of stars and constellations and is is overlaid with a revolving top cardstock that has one large center cut out revealing a star chart. Every 90 degrees from center is one of four cut windows that can used to easily rotated the top piece to account for time of months, hour in the day, degrees and Zodiac calandar. A printed instruction sheet is attached to the back. The Hammett's Planisphere was marketed for school use and sold though their catalog and in their retail stores.
Produced for educational use, this model contains ornamental embossed embellishments that help to date it. It is the same physical format as the popular Philips' Planisphere, created by bookseller George Philip & Sons, London, though theirs is usually at latitude 42. Thomas Whittaker (see PH.322588) also produced a similar version during this period. An earlier simple planisphere was produced for schools by Henry Whitall and J. L. Hammett Co.later discontinued the ornamental version for a plainer form like the Miller Planisphere.
John Hammett began selling erasers and slating paint for chalkboards in Rhode Island in 1863, moving to Boston in 1865. In 1890, new owners expanded the firm into all forms of paper school supplies. The firm was renamed the J. L. Hammett Co. and after 1895 opened factories in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. They moved their headquarters to Braintree, Mass. in 1967; and operated over 50 retail stores from 1974 to 2005.
This yellow comb was used with the puppet Travelling Matt from the HBO series Fraggle Rock. In the first episode of Fraggle Rock, Travelling Matt goes through a hole into the human world and what he considers “Outer Space.” Reminiscent of a 19th century anthropologist, Travelling Matt observes common objects in “Outer Space” and makes mostly wrong observations about how the human world works. He shares these observations in postcards that he sends back to his nephew Gobo in Fraggle Rock.
Fraggle Rock is a children’s television program created by Jim Henson that aired for five seasons on HBO from 1983 to 1987. Henson created the Fraggle world as one where different types of creatures lived together in a world where they were interconnected and important to one another. From the beginning, the show was designed to be easily adaptable to different cultures, which generally led to each country having its own human character, such as Doc in the American version, with the same Fraggle scenes dubbed in local languages.
In a book published in the year of his death, Scottish mathematician and laird John Napier (1550-1617) described several aids to arithmetic computations. One, since known as Napier’s rods or Napier’s bones, was a set of rods marked with the multiples of the digits from 0 to 9. Napier explained how to use these rods to assist in multiplication and division and, with the use of a special additional rod, take square roots and cube roots.
This set of Napier’s rods contains ten short wooden number rods with square cross section, and an eleventh, wider rod for square and cube roots. Each face of each number rod contains the first ten multiples of a digit. Each square containing a multiple is divided diagonally, with the tens value of the number written in the upper left corner and the ones value in the lower right corner. The number rods have multiples of the following numbers:
3 rods have multiples of 0, 1, 9, and 8
2 rods have multiples of 1, 5, 8, and 4
3 rods have multiples of 3, 2, 6, and 7
2 rods have multiples of 3, 4, 6, and 5
Four digits on the top of each rod indicates which multiples it contains. The sum of the digits whose multiples are on opposite sides of a rod always totals 9. All four of these types of rods are described in Napier's Rabdology. However, Napier suggested using ten distinct rods. The digits on the larger rod do follow Napier's description. The rods fit in a red leather-covered case.
For accounts of the use of the rods, see Napier, Bryden, or online sources. Napier also discovered logarithms, which had a more lasting influence on calculations as they came to be embodied inan instrument called the slide rule.
This set of rods was acquired by purchase. The case is a modern reproduction produced by the vendor.
References:
John Napier, Rabdology, trans. William F. Richardson with an introduction by Robin Rider, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press and Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers, 1990.
D.J. Bryden, Napier's Bones: A History and Instruction Manual, London: Harriet Wynter Publications, Ltd., 1992.
This is one of two English perpetual calendar medals in the collections using the Julian (rather than the present-day Gregorian) calendar. The Gregorian calendar would not be adopted in England until 1752. The small metal disc contains a wealth of calendrical information.
One side of the object has six concentric scales. The outermost scale give, for successive leap years, the day of the week of March 1 (the first day of the new year in the Julian calendar), as well as the date of Easter in successive years (with 1 indicating the month of March and 2 indicating April). Text next to this scale reads: EASTER (/) 1716.
The next innermost scale relates to times of the moon’s southing (e.g. the time the moon crosses the local meridian). It is labeled: SOUTH. The next innermost scale indicates the age of the moon on March 22 of successive years. This, the epact, increases by 11 days each year. The scale is labeled: EPACT. The three central scales on this side of the medal allow one to estimate the time of sunset for various days of the year. There is a central image of a setting sun.
The reverse side of the medal has a 7 x 7 calendrical table. The first two rows serve as heads of columns, indicating months which begin on the same day of the Julian calendar. These are 9 and 1 (November and March), 6 (August), 11 and 3 (January and May), 8 (October), 5 and 2 (July and April), 10 and 7 (December and September), and 12 and 2 (February and June). Note that in later calendrical styles, January and February would be in the next year.
The day of the week represented by the numbers in a column depended on the year. For example, in the Julian calendar for 1716, the columns indicate dates of Tuesdays. November and March had Tuesdays with dates 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29; August had Tuesdays with dates 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30; and so forth. Below the rows relating to months are five rows with squares numbered from 1 to 31. A mark in the last row reads: ABUCKLEY.
Compare MA.316919.2.
The object came to the Smithsonian from the collection of Henry Russell Wray.
Ackermann describes a single year calendar medal made by the English maker Andrew Buckley and refers to other calendar medals of his make.
Reference:
Silke Ackermann, “Maths and Memory: Calendar Medals in the British Museum Part I,” The Medal, Autumn, 2004, vol. 45, esp. pp. 18-20. Another example, unsigned, which has been attributed to Buckley and is a perpetual calendar, has British Museum catalog number 1906,1103.4743. A single year calendar medal signed by him has number 1901,1115.4. Both are described at the website of the British Museum.
This seventeenth century boxwood Gunter-type quadrant has two brass sights along the side of one radius. There is a hole drilled in the side of the quadrant between the sights. The plumb-bob and string which belong at the vertex are missing. The quadrant contains a geometric square marked from 10 to 50 to 10 in units of 2 degrees, an hour arc from 1 to 6 to 12 and an azimuth arc from 20 to 90 to 120, an ecliptic arc calibrated by zodiac symbol, a declination scale to 24 degrees, a horizon arc marked from 10 to 30, a second hour arc marked from 4 to 12 and arc marked from 10 to 50 by 10 degrees, a calendar arch named by month, and a circumference marked from 0 to 90 in units of one-half degree. There are two small "beetles" on either side of the calendar arc which may possibly be a maker's mark. This dial was made for a latitude of approximately 52 degrees.
Reference:
Abraham Rees, "Quadrant," Cyclopaedia (London, 1819), vol. 29.
The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Catalogue 6: "Sundials and Related Instruments," Part 4, Section 3, "Horary Quadrants."
This black and silver-colored metal instrument is a notched band adder with nine bands, eight columns, and a nine-digit display. Its bracket-shaped columns are color-coded for dollars and cents. A plate attached to the top which covers the lower part, for use in addition, or pivots and covers the upper part, for use in subtraction. Across the top is a zeroing bar. The device includes a metal stylus and fits in a black plastic case which also holds several yellowing sheets of paper. Instructions are stored with the object.
This British adder was received at the Smithsonian in about 1970. It seems likely that it was made in the mid-20th century.
Hand mixer for food. Molded plastic handle, formed for easy grip, dark brown with lines of red "faux" wood grain. Long mixing end, thick bent wire, with single length of coil in a fan shape.
Handle is marked: "PAT. NO. 2,390,544". Patented to Thomas Lamb, New York, New York, December 11, 1945, for "Handle", "...handles or hand grips adapted for use in connection with many articles which are lifted, pulled, pushed or otherwise manipulated by hand, as for example, luggage, hand tools, flat irons..."
Mixing end is marked: "#1060 U.S. PAT. 2906510". Patented to Victoria P. Harris, New York, New York, September 29, 1959, for "Hand Mixer for Food". "This invention relates to manually-operated mixing devices, and more particularly to devices for blending gravy, sauce, and the like, folding flour into beaten egg whites, aerating fruit juices, and performing similar operations."