Navigating & Scientific Instruments

The Museum's collection of navigation instruments rates among the largest and best of the world's maritime museums. The collection currently holds nearly twelve hundred instruments documenting the development of the art of navigation from the late sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Categories of instruments include navigating, timekeeping, meteorological, surveying, astronomical, magnetic, computing, drawing and drafting, oceanographic, optical and ship's equipment. The Museums holdings are especially strong in eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries American and European instruments. Its collection of chronometers is particularly strong while the collections of marine barometers and aerial navigation instruments are unsurpassed.

Highlights of the collection include a mid seventeenth century silver coated mariner's astrolabe, an ebony cross-staff by Hendrik Noordyk,and a circa 1780 octant by Joseph Roux. Of particular note are a marine barometer constructed by Edward Nairne and a circa 1772 chronometer by John Arnold both of which may have made voyages with Captain James Cook.

The Museum also maintains a varied collection of aids to navigation and communicating equipment. Aids to navigation include lighthouse equipment and navigational lights, buoys and channel markers. Communicating equipment includes radio systems, shipboard interior, exterior, and land-based communicating devices. Highlights include the first-order lighthouse lens from the Cape Charles lighthouse and a circa 1925 wireless transmitting and receiving radio by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.

SELECT AN IMAGE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

	Equinoctial Ring Dial J. Field, London, England, ca 1787 Gift of Roger Williams N3
	Nocturnal and Horary Quadrant Johannes Baptista Justi, Italy, 1565 1990.43.01
	Grand Orrery and Planetarium Watkins & Hill, London, England, ca 1819 N 12
	Butterfield Type Sundial J. Menard, Paris, France, ca 1680 NA 25
	Two-Day Marine Timekeeper John Arnold, London, England, ca 1772 Paul Mellon Chamberlain Collection NA 91
	Back-Staff Thomas Greenough, Boston, Massachusetts, 1760 NQ 1
	Gunter's Quadrant Henry Sutton, London, England, 1657 NQ 31
	Octant Joseph Roux, Marseilles, France, ca 1780 Gift of Captain Richard H. Tenney, USN Ret. 1986.46.01
	Mahogany Internal V-Shaped Marine Barometer Nairne & Blunt, London, England, ca 1780 Gift of Joel Barlow 1976.24.09
	Beveled Scale Sextant, No. 1403 Jesse Ramsden, London, England, ca 1795 Peter Ifland Collection 1998.39.34
	Cross-Staff Hendrik Noordyk, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ca 1804 1999.11.01
	Mariner's Astrolabe Nicholao Ruffo, Portugal, 1645 2000.52.01