Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 4 - ‘That Incomparable Instrument Maker’: The Reputation of Henry Sutton

  • Edited by Joshua Nall, University of Cambridge, Liba Taub, University of Cambridge, Frances Willmoth, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Whipple Museum of the History of Science
    Published online:
    19 August 2019
    Print publication:
    22 August 2019, pp 83-100
    • Chapter
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

  • Summary

    The London mathematical instrument maker Henry Sutton (c. 1624–1665) has been recognised since his own time as one of the most skilled engravers in his trade in seventeenth-century England. His versatility allowed him to work directly on brass or on wood and also in reverse on a copper printing plate, and his works survive in a variety of forms, including bound into books and as single printed sheets, applied to a brass plate or a wooden board. The instruments of his preserved at the Whipple Museum are among those generally cited by collectors, curators and instrument historians to justify a reputation that has continued to the present. Sutton’s reputation is the theme of this chapter: how it was promoted and established in his lifetime and how it survived him for a century or so, not simply for connoisseurs but for mathematical practitioners. Engraving skill, accuracy, and books were pillars of Sutton’s work, and this account of the renown it achieved will be intertwined with a consideration of his instruments, specifically the horary quadrants.