The Astrolabe

Is an astronomical device that was used in ancient days. It is of Arabic nature, they were great sailors, and with this device and others, they could navigate night and day. Who is the person that invented such a device, seems as unknown as the uses of device in itself. We are now in the age of copper lines of information being pumped into us from each direction. Small wire thingies mixed with satellites, and here we go. Most people use the computer for calculating a horoscope chart in our time, but there are still people that make them by hand – the good old way. But the astrolabe is truly a fascinating object, embedded with such lovely math, numbers floating in circles. The earliest mentioning of the astrolabe is said to be in the 12 century. It is not obvious that this device just came into being in the 12 century, merely because the Arabic people had been sailing much before the 12 century. It is of such complex nature, that it must be much older than that. We probably just haven’t found one before the 12 century, but maybe this is how we ‘look’ at it. An astrolabe is a device used for astronomy/astrology, so it would seem that the ancient Egyptians and other cultures would have had such a device for their star calculations. But there device might have looked different, for they knew about advanced math. Also mentioned short in this post: http://historyofastrology.blogspot.com/2007/09/constellation-of-scorpion.html