meridian quadrantn.

1675 J. Flamsteed Let. 18 Dec. (1995) I. 389 But this wee may discover without any consideration of the *s places if once wee get but our Wall Meridionall Quadrant into the place designed for it.]

1793 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 83 80 A telescope, thus fitted up, will have all the properties of a transit instrument. while the graduated circle will possess those of a meridian quadrant.

1890 J. L. E. Dreyer Tycho Brahe xii. 321 From the meridian quadrant to quadrants which could be placed in any azimuth the transition was simple enough.

1955 H. C. King Hist. Telescope i. 22 Like the early Arabians, Tycho found the fixed position of the meridian quadrant a great disadvantage.

1974 O. Pedersen Survey Almagest iv. 95 (note) A description of Ptolemy's instrument—a meridian quadrant or ‘plinth’—together with a discussion of his method and result has been given by Britton.

1879 Harper's Mag. May 942/2 Professor Listing gives in the Astronomische Nachrichten the following constants of the earth's figure:..equatorial quadrant, 10,017,560 meters; meridian quadrant, 10,000,205 meters; [etc.].

1914 Science 15 May 698/1 The first near approach to the size of the earth resulted from triangulation done in the last decades of the eighteenth century..to detemine the length of the earth's meridian quadrant.

1981 Ann. Statistics 9 467 In 1793 the French had decided to base the new metric system upon a unit, the meter, equal to one 10,000,000th part of the meridian quadrant, the distance from the north pole to the equator along a parallel of latitude passing through Paris.