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Golden Age

Instruments and diagrams from the scientific golden age of the Islamic world, drawn as precise plates in brass and ink. Astrolabes, globes, clocks and optics, each with its geometry properly worked out.

20 printsPortrait · square · landscape · phoneFree · 300 dpi
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A brass planispheric astrolabe hanging from its ring, its openwork rete of star pointers turning over a plate of altitude and azimuth lines.AstrolabeNo. 1
An astrolabe taken apart and set out in order: the mother plate with its throne, a latitude plate, the rete, the rule, the alidade and the pin with its wedge.Plates and ReteNo. 2
The rete on its own, drawn in ink on paper: the rim, the equator ring, the off-centre ecliptic band with its degree marks, a row of five roundels, and slender pointers whose tips mark the places of bright stars.ReteNo. 3
An astrolabe plate engraved with circles of altitude rising to the zenith, lines of azimuth and the horizon in red. Wide and tall formats show two plates for different latitudes.Latitude PlateNo. 4
The back of an astrolabe drawn in brass lines on lapis, with its degree scales, a sine grid, hour arcs, the shadow square and a sighting alidade.Shadow SquareNo. 5
A brass celestial globe on a turned stand, marked with the equator, the ecliptic and constellation lines set with pale stars, held in a meridian ring and a horizon ring.Celestial GlobeNo. 6
An armillary sphere of interlocking brass rings around a small earth: horizon, meridian, equator, ecliptic, tropics and a colure.ArmillaryNo. 7
A round chart of the northern sky centred on the pole, with lines joining the stars of the Great Bear, the Little Bear, Draco, Cassiopeia and their neighbours, and the ecliptic dashed in red.Northern SkyNo. 8
A sine quadrant hanging on its plumb line, its grid of sixty divisions crossed by red semicircles and a finely graduated arc.Sine QuadrantNo. 9
A vertical sundial set into a pointed niche in a stone mosque wall, with its hour lines, the equinox line in blue, the solstice curves in red and the gnomon's shadow across the plate.Wall DialNo. 10
A diagram of a water-driven castle clock: a ring dial, a crescent moving along its rail, rows of doors that open hour by hour, lit roundels and a cutaway reservoir with its float.Castle ClockNo. 11
A sheet of regular polygons, among them the hexagon, the pentagon, the octagon and the twelve-sided figure, each shown with the circles and crossing arcs of its compass construction and its corners marked in red.Compass WorkNo. 12
A cross-section of the eye with its coats, lens and optic nerve, receiving a cone of rays from a row of points.Visual ConeNo. 13
Parallel rays of light striking a parabolic mirror and meeting at its focus.Burning MirrorNo. 14
Thirty days of one lunar month set out as a table, each cell holding the moon a little further through its phases, from the dark new moon to full and back to a last thin crescent.Lunar TableNo. 15
The earth at the centre of nested circles for the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, ringed by the sphere of the fixed stars.Seven SpheresNo. 16
The sun lighting the earth, whose cone of shadow holds a copper-red moon, with the moon's orbit traced around it.EclipseNo. 17
Shelves of glazed albarello jars, bottles and lidded pots in blue, turquoise and white, with a brass mortar and pestle.ApothecaryNo. 18
A section through a house with a windcatcher tower. Cool air is drawn down the shaft and over water from an underground channel, while warm air rises out through the dome and the second shaft.WindcatcherNo. 19
A water engine: a paddle wheel turns a gear whose crank drives a sliding yoke and two opposed pistons that lift water to a cistern.Twin PumpNo. 20
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