NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sextant manufacturers
From: Michael Daly
Date: 2007 Oct 25, 14:31 -0400
From: Michael Daly
Date: 2007 Oct 25, 14:31 -0400
George Huxtable wrote: > One example, not on Alex's list, is Sewill, of Liverpool, who describes > himself on the label as "Maker to the Royal Navy". Sewill "made" my own > Vernier sextant, which appears in all respects to be a rebadged Heath clone, > but lacking their endless-tangent feature, introduced into Heath's own > instruments around the same time. Given the need to have a frame that behaves well in terms of strength, stiffness, temperature change etc, once a design is proven, it will be copied as soon as the patent has expired. I suspect, but can't prove, that some of these apparent clones are actually independently manufactured. Looks alone can't determine whether or not a maker has simply rebadged an instrument. In the case of a maker such as Spencer, Browning & Rust, it was known and documented that they had a good dividing engine and so graduated instruments (or parts, such as ivory scales) for others. Thus the SBR logo appears on instruments made by others. That isn't rebadging. On the other hand, since manufacturing was a cottage industry in the early days, specialists would make parts only (e.g. all-wood frames) and sell the part to any that want them. These parts could then be assembled by a vendor. This is similar to the manufacture of high-end bicycle gear from makers like Italy's Campagnola (at least in the 1970s) or high-end Swiss watches. Distinguishing rebadging versus contracting would be tricky without a lot of digging into the records of such companies. Mike --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---