Edmund Gunter (1581 to 1626) was an English clergyman, mathematician and instrument inventor whose name survives in surveying as the originator of Gunter's chain, the measuring chain that land surveyors used for centuries. Born in Herefordshire to a Welsh family, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ's College, Oxford, and held the living of St George's in Southwark from 1615. In 1619 he became Gresham Professor of Astronomy. A friend of the mathematician Henry Briggs, he published in 1620 the first printed table of artificial sines and tangents, the Canon Triangulorum. Beyond the chain he is known for the Gunter's sector and a portable quadrant, and for discovering that the variation of the magnetic compass changes over time. He died at Gresham College in London on 10 December 1626.
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Source Edmund Gunter (Grace's Guide)
In Field
Source Edmund Gunter (Grace's Guide)
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1. Edmund Gunter (Grace's Guide)
Timeline entry 1581
1581 The son of a Welshman of Gunterstown in Brecknockshire, he was born in Herefordshire
1926 Obituary
On December 10th,1626, there died in the Old Gresham College
In Field: Civil Engineering, 1926 Obituary [in-field]
known to all land surveyors for his invention of the "Gunter's Chain."
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