Museo Galileo
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Virtual Museum
Protractor
    • Setting:
      Room VI
    • Maker:
      David Usslaub
    • Place:
      German
    • Date:
      1599
    • Materials:
      gilt brass
    • Dimensions:
      diameter 90 mm
    • Inventory:
      3182
    • Protractor (Inv. 3182)

This protractor, made by David Usslaub, may have also formed part of a more complex instrument such as a surveying magnetic compass. In all likelihood, however, its only use was to reproduce on a sheet of drawing paper the position angles recorded in surveying work. The purpose of the process was to draw a topographic map. Brought to Florence from Germany by Prince Mattias de' Medici in the first half of the seventeenth century.