Imagine a device that can do everything: show the time, location, horoscope, and even help you make decisions in almost everything you do. It is expensive, customizable and comes with a variety of "apps". No, it's not the iPhone 7, but the ancestor of today's smartphone: astrolabe
The astrolabe is an extremely versatile tool that has been used for centuries in European and Islamic cultures, before being overshadowed by newer technologies.
However, some people still hang this "smartphone" on the wall at home. One of these people is Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy at Harvard University. He has been an astrolabe enthusiast since a student presented him with the object, who offered to sell this family treasure in order to help found a medical clinic in Afghanistan.
I expressed an interest in it because I knew there was such a thing but I had never really handled one before," says Gingerich. When the student offered to sell it, Gingerich obliged, with plans to use it as a teaching tool. "When I started to learn more about astrolabes, I realized I had a tremendous bargain and I sent him another check. This got me going on them.
The astrolabe varies in size depending on the region and historical period. It was made of pieces similar to those of a mechanical watch. A disc contained the two-dimensional projection of the Earth's latitude, above the disc there was a plate called "rele", which contained the location of some known stars in the sky. Above them were two straight lines that could measure the time and on the back of the device were guide lines that helped the wearers calculate the altitude at which the stars were located.
Even when the astrolabe is considered by scientists to be something primitive, even its less scientific components helped inspire modern techniques. From the invention of the astrolabe came new methods of mathematics, along with the early development of astronomy, says John Huth, a physicist at Harvard University. In fact, Huth says that astronomy and astrology developed hand in hand during this time.
If you look at these almanacs of the stars, in some sense they offered ways of predicting where the planets were going to be, but they were also giving information to astrologers,"This is one of the things that drove the development of astronomy, getting higher precision in astrological predictions.
The astrolabe was invented during the time of Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer who lived in the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD. Ptolemy left hints regarding the use of a three-dimensional instrument similar to the astrolabe.
