Elizabethan Instrument Makers
The Origins of the London Trade in Precision Instrument Making
Gerard L'E. Turner
Reviews and Awards
"Gerard Turner's work on the instrument-makers of Elizabethan England is ... [a] detailed catalogue, treating the work of a group of makers, rather than a particular form of instrument. The catalogue is introduced by a series of short chapters detailing various aspects of the English instrument-making trade during this period. ... The remaining two-thirds of the book are devoted to a catalogue of 103 instruments, and the importance of this contribution to the study of instruments cannot be overstated. For the first time, all known instruments by sixteenth-century maker Elias Allen are also included ... Introductory material to each entry provides information on the date, maker, signature and size of the object ... Tables of latitudes, perpetual calendars and star positions are reproduced carefully to permit comparison of the information provided here with contemporary and modern data."--British Journal for the History of Science
"Elizabethan Instrument Makers is a splendid scholarly work, reinforcing as it does the importance of instruments as fundamental cultural artefacts, and Professor Turner must be applauded for his achievement. And very appropriately, the book is dedicated to the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, which most definitely is, as Gerard Turner describes it, a locus mirabilis."--Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society