Acceptance and adaptation of octants and sextants in Japan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Details Acceptance and adaptation of octants and sextants in Japan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Acceptance and adaptation of octants and sextants in Japan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Jun 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002jahh....5....9n&link_type=abstract

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (ISSN 1440-2807), Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 9-20 (2002).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

2

Octants, Sextants, Vernier Scale, Japan, Latitude, Land-Surveying, Octants, Sextants, Vernier Scale, Latitude, Land Surveying

Scientific paper

This paper overviews the introduction, acceptance, and adaptation of octants and sextants in in Japan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Octants first appear in the Japanese literature in the 1770s. In 1783 Motoki Ryoei, a well-known interpreter and scholar, first translated a Dutch book on octants by Cornelis Douwes. From that date, octants continued to attract wide interest from Japanese professional and amateur astronomers and land surveyors, and a considerable number of books on octants and sextants were published up to the 1860s. Around 1806, an octant was made for the first time in Japan. Owing to the strict seclusion policy adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo period, the Japanese adopted octants as a convenient instrument for land surveying rather than for navigation, and even unique range finders were also invented as a modification. It was not until after the mid-1850s that octants were used for maritime navigation.

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