antik.it/Nautical-antiques/6309-Antique-sextant/
1554888776Code 6309 Antique sextantBrass sextant signed Buff & Buff Mfg Co Boston USA 5588 made in the beginning of the XX century, complete with lenses and compass placed in its original mahogany box complete with key lock and brass hinges. Silver flap and vernier, wooden handle, 3 colored glasses for the fixed mirror and 4 for the movable one, two telescopes, a microscope for reading the vernier, graduated from 0 to 140 °, index and mirror horizon. Box cm 26.5x26.5 h 14 - inches 10.43x10.43 h 5.5. Very good condition.
George Louis Buff started the company Buff & Buff in 1898 with his son Louis after the dissolution of his previous enterprise, Buff & Berger, located at 9 Province Court in Boston. It seems George had experience in the precision instrument business, having worked for various instrument firms in his native Germany, and later in England and New York. In 1900 George’s second son Carl joined Buff & Buff as a clerk, and after 1901, the company’s address was 329 Lamartine. Buff & Buff became a company in 1904. By 1909, George’s third son Henry had joined the company as a clerk. When George died in 1923, Louis became President of Buff & Buff Manufacturing. Upon Louis’s death in 1941, Henry took over the reins. Henry died in 1976, at the age of 91. The firm changed its name in Buff Instruments Corporation in 1979, and it was dissolved in 1983. Around 1984 a salvage operation was undertaken by the Liberty Tool Company and many spare parts, miscellaneous equipment and lithographs were found in the old factory. Today they are in the Davistown Museum in Liberty Maine.
In order to measure a height of a star (for example, the Sun), you have to set the instrument in a vertical plane and, looking through the sight device, to mark out the line of the horizon visible through the non-silvered half of the fixed mirror. Moving the alidade that is together with this mirror, make sure that the light rays coming from the star, and then reflected by the mobile mirror and by the silver half of the fixed mirror, be directed from the fixed mirror to the observer: if you look through the sight device, you see the image of the star, obtained for double reflection, coinciding with the line of the horizon. The height of the star is expressed by the angle whose value is read on the graduated scale. The filter is used when the star is the Sun.
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Italy: delivering on the average in 24 h.
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Other countries: delivering on the average in 5 weekdays; custom duties charged to the buyer.
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Nautical antiques
Code 6309 Antique sextant
Antik Arte & Scienza sas di Daniela Giorgi - via S. Giovanni sul Muro 10 20121 Milan (MI) Italy - +39 0286461448 - info@antik.it - www.antik.it - Monday-Saturday: 10am-7pm
