Inventors and engineers who made clocks, watches, telescopes, microscopes and other instruments of accurate measurement, from ancient water clocks to the pendulum clock and the marine chronometer. A person belongs here when the cited article credits the person with a timekeeping or measuring instrument. It excludes designers of engines and weapons, who sit in their own groups. The group is one of the groupings of engineers under this engineering field in the Technology Atlas, and each member keeps its own entry with its own cited sources and its own place in the field.
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Clockmakers and Precision Instrument Makers
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Arthur C. Ruge (Wikipedia article)
Has Member: Arthur C. Ruge, LeadQuote, Has Member: Arthur C. Ruge, Lead
who developed and pioneered the modern bonded wire resistance strain gauge
Carl Edvard Johansson
Has Member: Carl Edvard Johansson, LeadQuote, Has Member: Carl Edvard Johansson, Lead
Gauge Block Sets for Precision Measurement
Evangelista Torricelli (Wikipedia article)
Has Member: Evangelista Torricelli, LeadQuote, Has Member: Evangelista Torricelli, Lead
He is best known for his invention of the barometer
Levi Hutchins (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Levi Hutchins, Lead sectionQuote, Has Member: Levi Hutchins, Lead section
Levi Hutchins (August 17, 1761, June 13, 1855) was an American clockmaker, and self-proclaimed inventor of the first American alarm clock.
Taqi al-Din (Wikipedia)
WikipediaHas Member: Taqi al-Din, Lead paragraphQuote, Has Member: Taqi al-Din, Lead paragraph
He was the author of more than ninety books on a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, clocks, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, optics, and natural philosophy.
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (Wikipedia)
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Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (24 May 1686-16 September 1736) was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker.
Yankee Ingenuity: Curtis Veeder, a Mechanical Genius and Shrewd Businessman (Connecticut History)
Has Member: Curtis Hussey Veeder, BiographyQuote, Has Member: Curtis Hussey Veeder, Biography
Business and Industry, Invention and Technology, Hartford Bicycle Cyclometer, Veeder Manufacturing Company, Hartford, CT, ca. 1901. Designed to be bolted to a bicycle to measure the distance traveled
Hans Lipperhey (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationHas Member: Hans Lipperhey, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Hans Lipperhey, Introduction
He is commonly associated with the invention of the telescope, because he was the first one who tried to obtain a patent for it.
Liang Lingzan (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Liang Lingzan, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Liang Lingzan, Introduction
He invented a mechanized water clock with the Tantric monk and mathematician Yi Xing (Chinese: 一行; pinyin: Yī Xíng; Wade-Giles: I-Hsing).
Christiaan Huygens (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Christiaan Huygens, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Christiaan Huygens, Introduction
As an engineer and inventor, he improved the design of telescopes and invented the pendulum clock, the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years.
Robert Hooke (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Robert Hooke, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Robert Hooke, Introduction
He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed.
Jesse Ramsden (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Jesse Ramsden, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Jesse Ramsden, Introduction
His reputation was built on the engraving and design of dividing engines which allowed high accuracy measurements of angles and lengths in instruments.
John Harrison (Wikipedia)
Has Member: John Harrison, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: John Harrison, Introduction
John Harrison (3 April 1693 [O.S. 24 March 1692], 24 March 1776) was an English joiner and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought device for solving the problem of how to calculate longitude while at sea.
Wikipedia: William Oughtred
Has Member: William Oughtred, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: William Oughtred, Introduction
After John Napier discovered logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first known to use two such scales in separate rods sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division.
Zhang Heng (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Zhang Heng, IntroductionQuote, Has Member: Zhang Heng, Introduction
He invented the world's first water-powered armillary sphere to assist astronomical observation; improved the inflow water clock by adding another tank; and invented the world's first seismoscope, which discerned the cardinal direction of an earthquake 500 km (310 mi) away.
David Brewster (Grace's Guide)
Has Member: David Brewster, ObituaryQuote, Has Member: David Brewster, Obituary
He was well known as an inventor of philosophical instruments
Yi Xing (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Yi Xing, Lead sectionQuote, Has Member: Yi Xing, Lead section
In the realm of secular affairs, Yixing gained prominence for his reforms to the imperial calendar and his construction of a celestial globe featuring a liquid-driven escapement, the first in a long tradition of Chinese astronomical clockworks.
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