Compass geometrico military galileo biography death

Invented by Galileo in but published only in , the "geometric and military compass" served to carry out all of the operations required by the art of warfare: measuring calibers and weights of shot, aiming cannons, solving arithmetical and proportional problems as well as those of plane and solid geometry, calculating gradients, distances, heights and depths.

Interesting facts about galileo

For this purpose its legs bear various scales or proportional lines, called of the "metals", "stereometric", "geometric", "arithmetical" on the front , "polygraphic", "tetragonic" and "additional" on the rear. Galileo does not mention land surveying, which however is added to the operations of the "compass" in a version of his treatise published in at Lyon in the Opera omnia of Girolamo Cardano.

Although the instrument was designed mainly for military purposes, its operations were applicable to any other profession requiring even a basic knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. For example, merchants, bankers, craftsmen, engineers, topographers and astronomers all found it highly useful. In he built a silver model of the compass for Prince Cosimo de'Medici, to whom he dedicated the treatise on Le operazioni del compasso geometrico et militare [The operations of the geometric and military compass] published in Padua that same year.

The success of the geometric and military compass, which also brought Galileo some financial gain, provoked a bitter quarrel in the academic world over the authorship of the invention. Already by Galileo had been alerted to possible plagiarism, when the Dutchman Jan Eutel Zieckmesser presented a compass entirely similar to his own in Padua.

Having established the priority of his invention in a public confrontation in the home of Jacopo Cornaro, Galileo decided to write the Le operazioni del compasso geometrico e militare to forestall claims from any other usurper. Eight months after its publication, however, Baldassarre Capra, who had learned to use the instrument from Galileo himself in Cornaro's home, claimed to have invented the compass and published a text in Latin on its operations: Usus et fabrica circini cuiusdam proportionis , Padua Camerota, Filippo.

Galileo galilei family

Galileo Galilei. Cardano, Girolamo. Drake, Stillman. Galileo Galilei, Operations of the geometric and military compass A cura di Stillman Drake. Washington