This 1,000-year-old smartphone just dialed in
Found lost This 1,000-year-old smartphone just dialed in By Franz Lidz
For two thousand years, celestial observers have mapped the sky with astonishingly precise instruments called astrolabes.
Resembling large, old-fashioned vest pocket watches, astrolabes allowed users to determine the time, distances, altitudes, latitudes, and even (with a horoscope) the future.
An 11th century astrolabe recently surfaced at the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy.
Federica Gigante, a historian at the University of Cambridge, first noticed it in the corner of a photo when she searched online for an image of a 17th-century collector whose belongings were housed in the museum.
After learning that none of the museum staff knew what the piece was, Dr. Gigante to Verona for a closer look.
At the museum, a curator led her to a side room, where she stood by a window and watched the sunlight illuminate the copper elements of the relic.
She saw Arabic inscriptions and, seemingly everywhere, faint Hebrew markings, Western numerals, and scratches that seemed to have been keyed in.
“In the light of the light, I realized that this was not only an incredibly rare, ancient object, but a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews and Christians over nearly a millennium,” said Dr. Giant.
It is believed that astrolabes existed during the time of Apollonius of Perga, a Greek mathematician of the third century BC known as the Great Geometer.
Islamic scholars improved the gadgets, and by the ninth century AD, the Persians used astrolabes to locate Mecca and determine the five periods of prayer per day as mentioned in the Quran.
The instrument reached Europe through the Moorish conquest of much of Spain.
By analyzing the design, construction and calligraphy of Verona’s astrolabe, Dr. Gallante traces its origins to 11th-century Andalusia, where Muslims, Jews and Christians had worked side by side, especially in the field of science.
“When the astrolabe changed hands, it underwent numerous changes, additions and modifications,” said Dr. Gallante.
The original Arabic names of the zodiac signs were translated into Hebrew, a detail that suggested the relic had once circulated within a Sephardic Jewish community.
On one side of a plate was engraved in Arabic the phrase “for the latitude of Cordoba, 38° 30’”; on the other hand “for the latitude of Toledo, 40°.”
A handful of latitude values were corrected, some multiple times. Another plate was etched with North African latitudes, indicating that the instrument may have been used in Morocco or Egypt during the voyages.
A series of Hebrew additions brought Dr. Gigante concluded that the astrolabe had eventually reached the Jewish diaspora in Italy, where Hebrew, rather than Arabic, was used.
“Essentially, entering the revisions was like adding apps to your smartphone,” said Dr. Giant.