Declinatory
The declinatorium (Latin, also Deklinatorium Magneticum or Deklinations bussole ) is a historical measuring instrument. It consists of a magnetic needle hanging from a fine thread or attached to a central peg in a wooden box with glazed openings at both ends. The specific vibrations that are perceptible at different locations at different times when the needle is removed from the oscillating position are measured. A thread is stretched lengthways for this purpose.
The declinatorium found a technical application in the determination of the direction of the earth's magnetic field and the associated deviation ( declination ) of the geographic from the magnetic north direction. It was constructed by Georg Friedrich Brander around 1770 . The declinatorium was used by Alexander von Humboldt on his trip to America (1799–1804). In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauß further developed it into a magnetometer .
Literary
“(...) the present is made for nothing but the stomach of man; the past consists of history, which is again a pushed together present inhabited by the murdered, and is merely a declinatorium of our eternal horizontal deviations from the cold pole of truth, and an inclination of our vertical ones from the sun of virtue (...) "
See also
literature
- Otto Brathuhn: The self-writing Declinatorium in Clausthal . In: Zeitschrift für Berg-, Hütten- und Salinen-Wesen , Vol. 38 (1890), ISSN 0372-8072
- Adolf Fennel: Preliminary information about a new declinatorium for orientation measurements and about a new variometer . In: Mittheilungen aus dem Markscheidewesen , Vol. 8 (1894), ISSN 0026-685X