ABSTRACT
This chapter shows, the London Science Museum Pocket Book was compiled as a unique paper instrument for knowing, doing, and collecting mathematics by its producer and users alike. The work offered a rudimentary introduction to Euclidean geometry and to the doctrine of the sphere, and foregrounded trigonometrical techniques in plain language as valuable to positional astronomy and navigation. Dials displayed the almost universal functionality of mathematics, their lines measuring and quantifying the passage of time. Their geometry could be read from texts and instruments aimed at both the novice and the expert, with the lines and data of celestial cartography inscribed onto ornate instruments of gold and brass, or those of more quotidian paper and card. Technical chronology had already been well-integrated into the teaching of history, geography, theology, and mathematics at the English universities.
