John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal of the Greenwich Observatory, was fortunately wealthy and well-connected enough to equip the Observatory with a fine set of the newest telescopic instruments. One of these instruments is the 7 foot sextant shown in the illustration from Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis 1725 which was designed to measure inclinations to a precision of 10 seconds of arc.
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flamsteed
Figure 1 Flamsteed's Sextant |  |
