A Novel Italian-Hour Nocturnal by Michiel Coignet

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This Note is an addition to my paper ‘The Italian-Hour Nocturnal’, Annals of Science, 60 (2003), 249–68.

Notes

This Note is an addition to my paper ‘The Italian-Hour Nocturnal’, Annals of Science, 60 (2003), 249–68.

²Petrus Apianus, Cosmographia seu descriptio totius orbis (Landshut, 1524). The printer's block, now showing some damage, was also used in later editions edited by Gemma Frisius (1508–1555). A new block was cut for the French edition.

³Joachim Wiesenbad, ‘Pacificus von Verona als Erfinder einer Sternunuhr’, in P.L. Butzer and D. Lohrmann (eds), Science in Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times (Basel, 1993), 229–50.

⁴‘Contrary to the common planispheric astrolabe, it is a universal instrument, i.e. it can be used in any latitude’, G. Oestmann, ‘On the History of the Nocturnal’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, No. 69 (2001), 5–9, (p. 5).

⁷Turner (note 1), passim.

⁸The Julian Calendar (Old Style) would not be expected on an instrument dated 1602 made for use in Italy, where the Gregorian Calendar was adopted in 1582. The change was far from uniform over Europe, in particular in Protestant regions, such as parts of Switzerland, e.g. Geneva, Mulhause, Zurich. See ‘Dates of adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Europe’, pp. 236–41 in C.R. Cheney (ed.), revised edn by Michael Jones, A Handbook of Dates (Cambridge, 2000).

⁵Diameter 68 mm; height 24 mm. Provenance: Sotheby's, Fine Instruments of Science and Technology 1500–1900, London, 5 May 1989, Lot 219; Christie's, Exceptional Scientific and Engineering Works of Art, London, 7 April 2005, Lot 586.

⁶A. Meskens, Familia Universalis: Coignet. Een familie tussen wetenschap en kunst (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten; Antwerp, 1998). Among many different types of instrument made by Michiel Coignet, he lists the present one as the only example of a compendium.