The Sector: the calculator of the 1500s
Вставка
- Опубліковано 10 жов 2024
- An antique ivory sector, from the late 1800s. Also called the proportional compass, or the military compass. Invented very slowly over about 2000 years, ending up in 1500s Europe.
This is episode 83 of my video series about old calculating methods.
Printable sector: www.thingivers...
Printable dividers: www.thingivers...
Iranian Astrolabe photo by Wikimedia user Masoud Safarniya CC-BY-SA-3.0
en.wikipedia.o...
Galileo sector photo by Wikimedia user Ragesoss CC-BY-SA-3.0
en.wikipedia.o...
End song inspired by "Hotter than a Molotov" by The Coup. • The Coup: Hotter Than ...
Chris Staecker webarea: faculty.fairfi...
#clampin
"Before he was buildin' scopes n vexin' popes, he was clampin'!" What a line! Great episode as always!!
The history of the tools used for calculation is always fascinating.
"Buildin' scopes and vexin' popes"
As the kids say, MC Staecker your bars are fire.
Honestly quite a genius tool even for today
@ChrisStaecker The hinged ruler was pretty common in woodworking. If you want their origin, I'd look into "story sticks" and "pinch rods".
A story stick was a physical representation of the measurements needed to make a project. The whole length would be the length of the back post of a chair, for example, and there would be cutouts the correct length for the front legs and different rungs.
Pinch rods of different sizes were used similarly. They were a pair of sticks designed to slide parallel to eachother and lock in place, sometimes with little tabs on the ends. They were useful for making a semi-permanent record of a specific distance. If, for example, you're making a cabinet to fit in a cutout in a client's wall but need to with in your shop, you just put the sticks in the cutout and expand them as far as they'll go.
Physical records you can touch are generally more accurate than written numbers, at least when you need to use them over and over.
Yes I've heard of story sticks, but not pinch rods- sounds interesting. Both sound similar to ticking sticks. Thanks-
@@ChrisStaecker Of course! I know you usually do math objects and they're less relevant, but I thought they might be interesting! I'm fascinated by the older ways of "doing geometry without doing math" that let illiterate people build buildings that are still square and true 500 years later. The book "Euclid's Door" by Lost Art Press covers how to bootstrap yourself into having an accurate straightedge, square, and winding sticks (for judging parallel by eye).
Also, it looks like some people are still using Sectors
ua-cam.com/video/DpRoAqwWu7A/v-deo.html
Fascinating video! I'd not seen one of these before. Thanks!
71 views in 15 minutes? You're blowing up!
Welcome to the z-list !
I like these ! They are from a time when math was done via geometrical drawings
Came for the clamp, stayed for the 'Chomp'!
Oh my god! I've been looking for a video on this! Finally!
edit: chomp chomp chomp
We’re back baybeeeee
Golden! .. yea that's it, that's all I wanted to say here. k tks for the vid! :D
Awesome vid
forty-a-little times twenty-a-lot is eleven hundred something. amazing. EDIT: I don't mean to be snarky, but I'm curious why instruments like this and the slide rule were so commonly used for multiplying, when an abacus could give you the exact answer in seconds
they are simpler and easier to learn how to use, I guess
I would say a slide rule is easier to use than an abacus, and also the slide rule & sector can be easily tricked out with trigonometric and other scales, giving more functionality using more or less the same form factor. The abacus isn't extensible at all.
I have a question : could you geometrically make a slide rule with one of these ?
I am not sure if one could make logaritms with this one
No you can't- this is a great question though. IF you could make a logarithmic scale with this, then in particular it would be possible to construct a scale with the number e on it. But this is not possible using only a sector because the number e is irrational and transcendental.
By doing simple ratios using the linear scale, the sector is only capable of constructing rational numbers. If you additionally used the sector to measure the hypotenuse of triangles, you can also get some irrational numbers like √2. But you can't get e, since e is transcendental (ie it can't ever be constructed even using radicals).