Talk:Sector (instrument)

A proportional compass is not a sector and should not redirect to this article.
A sector is an instrument used in doing quick approximate calculations and is no longer made today. A proportional compass is a draftsman's device still in modern use that aids in transferring plans and diagrams drawn at one scale to another image drawn at a second larger or smaller scale. 67.0.129.122 (talk) 18:48, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
 * What you're describing is also called a reduction compass. The term "proportional compass" has been used for both of these devices. From "The Sector: its history, scales, and uses" by Michael R. Williams and Erwin Tomash, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 2003, volume 25, issue 1, pp. 34-47: "Known in English as a sector, most of the early European works refer to it as a proportional compass. This causes confusion with the slightly earlier, less useful, device of the same name." --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 18:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I've just added a "redirect hatnote" to point readers toward the reduction compass article if that's what they're looking for. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 16:06, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

overemphasis on Galileo's version
Most of the later works about the sector that I have found in trying to research are about Gunter's version (invented ~1606 with published explanations from ~1623), which was refined/developed compared to the versions by Galileo and Hood (independently invented ~1598). It would be helpful to have a clearer comparison between these variants, and a proper description of the scales included by Gunter, which from what I can tell set the standard for the following centuries. –jacobolus (t) 16:05, 8 April 2023 (UTC)