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Navigate around Epact as you would any other website: follow any of the underlined links
for more information and click on the pictures to look at an enlarged view.
To browse thorough the catalogue entries simply go to the catalogue
section and click on Next or Previous in the margin to move one instrument at a time in the
sequence. Alternatively click on the First or Last links to go to the beginning or the end of
the sequence of catalogue entries. Clicking on the Instrument Type, Maker, Place or Date links
in the margin simply changes the order in which the catalogue entries are sorted. The Overview
and Details links change between the shorter, more general account of the instruments, and the
technical descriptions.
In both the handlist and search facility
results pages, you can choose whether to view the text descriptions or thumbnail pictures, by
clicking on Text or Pictures at the bottom of the page. It is also possible to alter the number
of instruments listed on each page by choosing one of the figures in the
"Show 10 | 20 | 50 | 100 | ... instruments at a time" line.
Epact consists of 520 catalogue entries and a variety of supporting
material. All European instruments from the four museums by makers who were active before 1600
have been entered in the catalogue. They include astrolabes, armillary spheres, sundials,
quadrants, nocturnals, compendia, surveying instruments, and so on. Examples range from
ordinary instruments for everyday use to more extravagant and often lavish pieces destined for
the cabinets of princes.
Each instrument in the catalogue is described with the aid of one or
more photographs and two levels of text: an overview text providing a short account of the most
notable features of the instrument and a detailed text giving more technical and scholarly
information.
Supporting material includes a thematic essay providing background
information about the medieval and renaissance mathematical arts and sciences as well as a
number of technical articles giving explanations of how the main
different types of instrument operated. Short entries on all makers
and places represented in Epact are supplemented by a
glossary of technical terms found in the overview texts and a
bibliography lists all references from the detailed texts.
Terms from the makers and places indexes and the glossary are all cross-linked from individual
catalogue entries.
Catalogue entries may also be reached via the handlist of all
instruments and the search facility, which allows the catalogue to be
limited by instrument-type, maker, place, holding museum, and date, as well as providing free
text searching.
A more detailed account of the cataloguing process and coverage of Epact is provided under
cataloguing conventions.
Please e-mail any comments you have about Epact to
museum@hsm.ox.ac.uk
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