Several unsigned wooden instruments of professional quality are 

 in the collection of the Dartmouth College Museum. Of particular 

 interest is a semicircumferentor (fig. 32) that belonged to the 

 Reverend Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779) who founded Moor's 

 Indian Charity School at Lebanon, Connecticut, which subse- 

 quently developed into Dartmouth College. It is claimed that it was 

 with this instrument that the area of the college was surveyed when 

 it moved to Hanover, N.H. The instrument is actually a graph- 

 ometer consisting of a block of hard wood faced with a brass plate 

 with a trough compass; it is tentatively dated about 1769. The 

 identity of the maker is unknown, but it may have been the product 

 of Hagger, who made a similar instrument, illustrated here, or it 

 may have been produced by any one of the other makers noted. 

 The type of instrument is an old one. It is described in John 

 Love's Geodaesiay Or the Art of Surveying and Measuring Land^ 

 published in London in 1688. Abel Flint ^' also commented on this 

 semicircle as being sometime used, as well as the plane table and 

 perambulator — 



. . . but of these instruments very little [use] is made in New England; and they 

 are not often to be met with. For general practice none will be found more 

 useful than a common chain and a compass upon Rittenhouse's construction. 



Another of the unusual wooden surveying instruments in the 

 collection of the Dartmouth College Museum is a wooden surveying 

 compass (fig. 33) in which the sighting bars appear relatively close 

 to the dial. A metal plate, painted green, is stamped with the 

 degrees marked to 90°. A single N for the north point is stamped 

 into it, presumably with steel punches. The instrument is rela- 

 tively primitive, and is sufficiently different from the other exam- 

 ples noted to merit mention. There is no maker's name, nor any 

 clue to the date or place or period of origin. 



An unsigned semicircumferentor made of wood is owned by 

 Mr. Roleigh Lee Stubbs of Charleston, West Virginia. The 

 instrument measures 3% in. by 1)^ in. by 1 in., and there are sighting 

 bars 3 in. high on a swinging brass bar pinned at the center of the 

 base. It has a trough compass, and the gradations around the edge 

 of the semicircle are marked with tiny brass pins. The date 

 "1784" is stamped into the wood with the same type of figures as 

 appear in the degree markings, probably with small steel punches. 



A surveying compass of the conventional type, also made of 



^^ Abel Flint, System of Geometry and Trigonometry together with a Treatise of 

 Surveying (Hartford: Olive D. Cooke, 1804), p. 86. 



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