Museo Galileo
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Virtual Museum
Fragments of paper astrolabes
    • Setting:
      Room II
    • Maker:
      unknown
    • Place:
      Florence?
    • Date:
      17th cent.
    • Materials:
      paper
    • Dimensions:
      30x30 mm
    • Inventory:
      1289bis
    • Fragments of paper astrolabes (Inv. 1289bis)

These rare fragments of a plane astrolabe and other astronomical instruments are an example of a product that enjoyed wide diffusion but was hard to preserve. Persons who could not afford to buy a high-quality metal instrument made one out of paper or cardboard, sometimes pasting together pages from old books. These fragments include: the back of an astrolabe mater made from the pages of a book on the battle of Lepanto; an astrolabe tympanum for latitude 43°; a Rojas planisphere; fragments of the rete of a cardboard astrolabe; an horary disk with index.