Instruments

In this set were scanned photographic plates of several instruments of astronomy, geophysics, and for measurement of time intervals and distribution of time signals. A great share of these equipment were purchased thanks to the initiative of Henrique Morize. They are meteorological stations, seismographs, tide forecaster, pendulums, radiotelegraphy equipment and the largest refracting telescope of Brazil, at 46cm.

It is a fact that, in 1911, Henrique Morize, then director of the Observatório Nacional, materialized the purchase of the 46cm telescope, "the most powerful and perfected equatorial", as he put it. There were other reasons for the purchase since Brazil could not "remain in a position of high inferiority regarding scientific matters." Morize was talking about our Chilean and Argentinian neighbors who had acquired similar telescopes.

Note: The images of scanned plates have their names formed, initially, by three letters associated to a number to facilitate their location in the digital database and physical archive of the Observatório Nacional library.