ABSTRACT
When Ramsden came to London in 1756 and apprenticed himself to a maker of mathematical instruments he was entering into a craft which had been practiced in that city for about two centuries.2 Mathematical instruments, those which serve principally to measure and compute lengths and angles, were everyday tools for ‘mathematical practitioners’, principally builders, shipwrights, land surveyors, cartographers, astronomers, military engineers and mathematicians.3
