Dr. Samuel Gessner, Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT), University of Lisbon, will bring astrolabe sets for students interested in making their own.

There will be snacks. Dr. Gessner is also lecturing later in the day on scientific instruments in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

What is an astrolabe?

An astrolabe is a tool early astronomers used to measure the inclined position of a celestial body. But as Tom Wujec demonstrates in this TED Talk, they were  much more early computers than simply measuring instruments.

FYP students may be excited to know that the earliest work that exist describing a measuring instrument in the English language was A Treatise of the Astrolabe written by the great 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer for the 10-year old “little Lewis” who may have been his own son.