Medieval gadget freaks of Britain rejoice!

It looks like the British Museum has a good chance of keeping this medieval brass astrolabe quadrant on public display in the UK. The export license for the device has been delayed until June, giving the BM a chance to raise its 350,000-pound selling price - which should please retrotechnophiles and Chaucerians alike.

The astrolabe originated with the Greeks, but was popularized by Islamic astronomers and became widely used across Europe. The British Museum already has several, like this pretty one I saw last summer:

Brass astrolabe with silver inlay, 1712
British Museum

So why do they need another, less impressive, very expensive astrolabe? It has to do with understanding what kinds of technology were widely available in medieval England. According to this Nature News article, unlike the larger, flashier versions,

the new quadrant is a simple, everyday item -- the kind of thing a cleric or a merchant would have carried with them for convenient time-keeping. All the same, says [Jim] Bennett, "you had to know some astronomy to work one of these devices". He adds that it has design features that would appeal to medieval gadget freaks, such as a moveable eagle that indicates the date of Easter. (source)

Sweet! And useful - Easter always takes me by surprise. As does daylight savings time. Apparently I need an astrolabe, not an iPhone.

The astrolabe quadrant is especially nifty because it was found in an inn outside Canterbury, where it may been lost by a pilgrim - just like those described by Chaucer. And in addition to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer also wrote a treatise on the use of the astrolabe, addressed to his son. The Canterbury astrolabe even dates to the right time - about 1388, only three years before Chaucer's treatise.

The description in Chaucer's treatise actually matches a different kind of astrolabe, like this beautiful example from the collection of the British Museum. They call it the "Chaucer astrolabe," but as this article by Philip Ball shows, that attribution is hardly conclusive.

Chaucer Astrolabe, 1326
British Museum

No matter whom it belonged to, if this kind of quadrant astrolabe was common in Chaucer's time, it gives us a better idea how deeply this technology penetrated the English middle classes:

it supports the idea that Chaucer's work was a piece of popular science writing, understandable to more than just the elite. "It suggests that this kind of knowledge wasn't too arcane or academic," says Bennett. (source)

To make a modern analogy, how many of your friends and family can use a graphing calculator, and what does that say about the level of scientific education in this country? If you're an English major (like me), you're probably very interested in who exactly Chaucer conceived as his audience, and how savvy/educated they were. And if you're a scientist (like me), you're probably very interested in social trends in technological literacy, in general.

Of course, on another level, these astrolabes are just downright beautiful, and they were valued for their aesthetic qualities when they were new - something you absolutely cannot say about a TI-82.