Showing posts with label Nautical maritime sextant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nautical maritime sextant. Show all posts

Monday, March 31, 2014

Bookend Manufacturer

Bookend


bookend is an object that is designed to buttress, or support, an upright row of books. It is placed on either end to prevent books from falling over, such as in a half-filled bookshelf. Bookends are both utilitarian and, often, decorative. They are common in libraries and in homes. Heavy bookends have been used for centuries; the simple sheetmetal bookend was originally patented in the 1876 by William Stebbins Barnard,[1] and uses the weight of the books themselves to make an anchor.
Bookends can be an important consideration in home decor. Some bookends are made of bronze, marble, wood and even large geodes. Elaborate and decorative bookends are not uncommon. In libraries, simple metal brackets are often used to support the end of a row of books.
 

Wooden Ship wheel

Ship's wheel



ship's wheel is used to change its course. Together with the rest of the steering mechanism it forms part of the helm. It is typically connected to a mechanical, electric servo, or hydraulic system. In some modern ships the wheel is replaced with a simple toggle that remotely controls an electro-mechanical or electro-hydraulic drive for the rudder, with a rudder position indicator presenting feedback to the helmsman.
Helmsmen on older ships used a tiller (a horizontal bar fitted directly to the top of the rudder post) or a whipstaff (a vertical stick acting on a tiller).
Early ships' wheels (c. 1700) were operated to correspond to the motion                                          of The design of ships' wheels probably influenced that of the modern steering wheel.
the tiller, with a clockwise motion (corresponding to a right tiller motion) turning the rudder and thus the ship to the left. Eventually the control direction of the wheel was reversed to make it more consistent with the action of a motor vehicle's steering wheel.
A traditional ship's wheel is composed of eight cylindrical wooden spokes (though sometimes as few as six or as many as ten) shaped like balustersand all joined at a central wooden hub or nave (sometimes covered with a brass nave plate) which housed the axle. The square hole at the centre of the hub through which the axle ran is called a drive square and was often lined with a brass plate (and therefore called a brass boss, though this term was used more often to refer to a brass hub and nave plate) which was frequently etched with the name of the wheel's manufacturer. The outer rim is composed of four sections each made up of stacks of three felloes, the facing felloe, the middle felloe, and the after felloe. Because each group of three felloes at one time made up a quarter of the distance around the rim, the entire outer wooden wheel was sometimes called the quadrant. Each spoke ran through the middle felloe creating a series of handles on the outside of the wheel's rim. One of these handles/ spokes was frequently given extra grooves at its tip which could be felt by a helmsman steering in the dark and used by him to determine the exact position of the rudder—this was theking spoke and when it pointed straight upward the rudder was dead straight. The wood used in construction of this type of wheel was most often eitherteak or mahogany.
The steering gear of earlier ships sometimes consisted of a double wheel where each wheel was connected to the other with a wooden spindle that ran through a barrel or drum. The spindle was held up by two pedestals that rested on a wooden platform, often no more than a grate. A tiller rope or chain (sometimes called a steering rope or chain) ran around the barrel in five or six loops and then down through two tiller rope slots at the top of the platform before connecting to two sheaves just below deck (one on either side of the ship's wheel) and thence out to a pair of pulleys before coming back together at the tiller and therefore the ships rudder. Movement of the wheels (which were connected and moved simultaneously) caused the tiller rope to wind in one of two directions and shifted the tiller left or right. In a typical and intuitive arrangement, a helmsman turning the wheel counterclockwise would cause the tiller to move to starboard and therefore the rudder to swing to port causing the vessel to also turn to port.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Sextant history & use - Nautical sextant manufacturer

Sextant

Nautical Sextant Manufacturer
Nautical sextant manufacturer
sextant is an instrument used to measure the angle between any two visible objects. Its primary use is to determine the angle between a celestial object and the horizon which is known as the object's altitude. Using this measurement is known as sighting the object, shooting the object, or taking a sight and it is an essential part of celestial navigation. The angle, and the time when it was measured, can be used to calculate a position line on a nautical or aeronautical chart. Common uses of the sextant include sighting the sun at solar noon and sighting Polaris at night (in the Northern Hemisphere), to find one's latitude. Sighting the height of a landmark can give a measure of distance off and, held horizontally, a sextant can measure angles between objects for a position [1] A sextant can also be used to measure the lunar distance between the moon and another celestial object (e.g., star, planet) in order to determine Greenwich time which is important because it can then be used to determine the longitude on a chart.The scale of a sextant has a length of  of a turn (60°); hence the sextant's name (sextāns, -antis is the Latin word for "one sixth"). An octant is a similar device with a shorter scale ( turn, or 45°), where as a quintant ( turn, or 72°) and a quadrant (¼ turn, or 90°) have longer scales.
Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) invented the principle of the doubly reflecting navigation instrument (a reflecting quadrant—see Octant (instrument)), but never published it. Two men independently developed the octant around 1730: John Hadley (1682–1744), an English mathematician, and Thomas Godfrey (1704–1749), a glazier in Philadelphia. John Bird made the first sextant in 1757. The octant and later the sextant, replaced the Davis quadrantas the main instrument for navigation.


Advantages

Nautical sextant manufacturer
Like the Davis quadrant (also called backstaff), the sextant allows celestial objects to be measured relative to the horizon, rather than relative to the instrument. This allows excellent precision. However, unlike the backstaff, the sextant allows direct observations of stars. This permits the use of the sextant at night when a backstaff is difficult to use. For solar observations, filters allow direct observation of the sun.
Since the measurement is relative to the horizon, the measuring pointer is a beam of light that reaches to the horizon. The measurement is thus limited by the angular accuracy of the instrument and not the sine error of the
length of an alidade, as it is in a mariner's astrolabe or similar older instrument.
A sextant does not require a completely steady aim, because it measures a relative angle. For example, when a sextant is used on a moving ship, the image of both horizon and celestial object will move around in the field of view. However, the relative position of the two images will remain steady, and as long as the user can determine when the celestial object touches the horizon the accuracy of the measurement will remain high compared to the magnitude of the movement.
Nautical sextant manufacturer
The sextant is not dependent upon electricity (unlike many forms of modern navigation) or anything human-controlled (like GPS satellites). For these reasons, it is considered an eminently practical back-up navigation tool for ships.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Sundial Compass - Antique reproduction

A sundial is a device that tells the time of day by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a sharp, straight edge. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow-edge aligns with different hour-lines. All sundials must be aligned with their styles parallel to the axis of the Earth's rotation to tell the correct time throughout the year. The style's angle from the horizontal will thus equal the sundial's geographical latitude. It is common for inexpensive mass-produced decorative sundials to have incorrect hour angles, which cannot be adjusted to tell correct time.

There are different types of sundials. Some sundials use a shadow or the edge of a shadow while others use a line or spot of light to indicate the time.
The shadow-casting object, known as a gnomon, may be a thin rod, or other object with a sharp tip or a straight edge. Sundials employ many types of gnomon. The gnomon may be fixed or moved according to the season. It may be oriented vertically, horizontally, aligned with the Earth's axis, or oriented in an altogether different direction determined by mathematics.[citation needed]
With sundials using light to indicate time, a line of light may be formed by allowing the sun's rays through a thin slit or focusing them through a cylindrical lens. A spot of light may be formed by allowing the sun's rays to pass through a small hole or by reflecting them from a small circular mirror.[citation needed]
Sundials also may use many types of surfaces to receive the light or shadow. Planes are the most common surface, but partial spheres,cylinders, cones and other shapes have been used for greater accuracy or beauty.[citation needed]
Sundials differ in their portability and their need for orientation. The installation of many dials requires knowing the local latitude, the precise vertical direction (e.g., by a level or plumb-bob), and the direction to true North. Portable dials are self-aligning; for example, it may have two dials that operate on different principles, such as a horizontal and analemmatic dial, mounted together on one plate. In these designs, their times agree only when the plate is aligned properly.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

We at maximus international manufacturers  sextant of different types and techniques and here is a brief introduction of sextant below : 
sextant is an instrument used to measure the angle between any two visible objects. Its primary use is to determine the angle between a celestial object and the horizon which is known as the object's altitude. Using this measurement is known as sighting the object, shooting the object, or taking a sight and it is an essential part of celestial navigation. The angle, andposition line on a nautical or aeronautical chart. Common uses of the sextant include sighting the sun at solar noon and sighting Polaris at night (in the Northern Hemisphere), to find one's latitude. Sighting the height of a landmark can give a measure of distance off and, held horizontally, a sextant can measure angles between objects for a position on a chart.[1] A sextant can also be used to measure the lunar distance between the moon and another celestial object (e.g., star, planet) in order to determine Greenwich time which is important because it can then be used to determine the longitude.
the time when it was measured, can be used to calculate a
The scale of a sextant has a length of  of a turn (60°); hence the sextant's name (sextāns, -antis is the Latin word for "one sixth"). An octant is a similar device with a shorter scale ( turn, or 45°), where as a quintant ( turn, or 72°) and a quadrant (¼ turn, or 90°) have longer scales.
Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) invented the principle of the doubly reflecting navigation instrument (a reflecting quadrant—see Octant (instrument)), but never published it. Two men independently developed the octant around 1730: John Hadley (1682–1744), an English mathematician, and Thomas Godfrey (1704–1749), a glazier in PhiladelphiaJohn Bird made the first sextant in 1757. The octant and later the sextant, replaced the Davis quadrantas the main instrument for navigation.