This octant has an ebony frame and reinforced brass index arm. The brass
scale is graduated every 20 minutes from -2o to +100o and
read by vernier and tangent screw to single minutes of arc. Richard Patten
(1792-1865) began in business in New York City in 1813 and was soon the
proprietor of a Navigation Warehouse. By 1820 he was advertising that he was a
"manufacturer of mathematical instruments . . . equal to any in the City of
London." Elsewhere he claimed to be the "only manufacturers of Sextans
[sic] and Quadrants in New York," and that "All instruments in
the above line [are] made to order & warranted, being divided on an engine
after the Plan of Ramsden’s."
The accompanying photograph shows this octant in the hands of an American
captain named David Bowen Moore.
Ref: Deborah J. Warner, "Richard Patten (1792-1865)," Rittenhouse
6 (1989): 57-63.
