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Collections Research
Astrolabe Metallurgy
In 1996 Adler Curator Dr. Bruce Stephenson began a collaborative investigation of the metallurgy of astrolabes in the Adler collection with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory and eventually at Lehigh University. This investigation has culminated in a Ph.D. dissertation by Lehigh's Brian Dale Newbury (2004).
You may download, in PDF form, chapters of Dr. Newbury's dissertation, and also the data files on which that dissertation was based. Some of these files contain images and are correspondingly large.
Dissertation
A Non-Destructive Synchrotron X–ray Study of the Metallurgy and Manufacturing Processes of Eastern and Western Astrolabes in the Adler Planetarium Collection
Brian Dale Newbury
Materials Science and Engineering Lehigh University December 2004 Dissertation Files (PDF)
Data Files (PDF)
These files are not raw data but have been processed into the form used in the dissertation. Each pdf file contains data for a single instrument. In order to understand or interpret these data you will need to consult the dissertation, especially the Results and Discussion section.
Adler instruments are identified by accession number. Western Astrolabes are documented in Roderick & Marjorie Webster, Western Astrolabes (Chicago, 1998). Eastern Astrolabes are documented in David Pingree et al., Eastern Astrolabes (Chicago, 2005). The entire Adler collection may be queried from our Collections Database.
Note that the files linked below contain images and are correspondingly large. A broadband connection is recommended for downloading.
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