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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sextant stands; was Lunar Distances: Graphic Methods
From: Kieran Kelly
Date: 2004 Apr 25, 18:38 +1000
From: Kieran Kelly
Date: 2004 Apr 25, 18:38 +1000
No they weren't custom made. Royal Navy hydrographers used them when taking shore based lunar distance observations and you can find them occasionally mentioned on exploration manifests. They were manufactured by Troughton, Cary and Dolland to name a few and usually came in a leather case as a kit including stand, sextant and artificial horizon. I have a Plath catalogue from the 1920's where they were still making and selling stands. There is an excellent example in the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. It however is a surveying octant and a very large and heavy one. the stand was necessary to support the weight of the very large instrument. Pictures of the stands are shown in Ifland's Taking the Stars, pages 126, 127 and 136. I have been trying to buy a sextant stand for years to no avail so if any old surveyor has one in the garage I would like to hear from you. In all the time I have been collecting sextants I have never seen a stand offered on E bay and that's saying something given the plethora of stuff that washes through its sextant site. Kieran Kelly Sydney