Elias Allen
Elias Allen (c.1588 in Tonbridge – March 1653 in London) was an English maker of sundials and scientific instruments.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Allen was apprenticed in 1602 to Charles Whitwell, the London copper engraver, instrument maker and clockmaker, citizen of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, whose premisses were just outside Temple Bar, London, near St Clement Danes Church. After his master died, Allen established himself in a workshop beside the church there.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He made instruments for James I and Charles I, among others, and was associated with the mathematicians Edmund Gunter and William Oughtred.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". His apprentices included Ralph Greatorex.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He served from 19 January 1637 until 29 July 1638 as Master of the London Clockmakers' Company.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He died in March 1653 and was buried in St Clement Danes.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
In 1638 William Oughtred wrote a letter to Allen asking him to make the earliest known Oughtred slide rule, and indicating that Oughtred himself had never made one. Oughtred writes, "I have here sent you directions (as you requested me being at Twickenham) about the making of the two rulers. [...] I would gladly see one of them when it is finished, which yet I never have done."[1] The instrument does not survive, but there is a reverse print of it.[2]
Disambiguation
A well-established surveyor of the same name was active during the same period. In June 1623 (for example) a certain Elias Allen produced surveyed plans (at 20 perches to the inch) of the estates at Malden and Chessington in Surrey, including Mott's Furze Farm, for the muniments of Merton College, University of Oxford; in 1629 he produced a further survey of their lands at Thorncroft in Leatherhead.[3] In recent scholarship he is usually taken to be a different person from the instrument maker, and his life-dates are given as slightly earlier (viz.: born c. 1575, died before 1637).[4]
Notes
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". Template:Pb Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1". Template:Pb The original letter, dated 20 August 1638, is in the Cambridge University archive, Item Reference Code: GBR/0012/MS Add.9597/13/5/215. "Enclosed is a 2 foot long impression of a copper plate (f.215b.) This has been photographed in two halves."
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- ↑ H. Lambert, 'Surrey manors held by Merton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the seventeenth century', Surrey Archaeological Collections, XLI (1933), pp. 34-49 (Archaeology data service pdf).
- ↑ See, for example, A.S. Bendall, 'Merton College and the mapping of its estates, 1601-1836', Oxoniensia 65 (2000), pp. 79-110, at p. 88 (Oxoniensia pdf).
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References
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External links
- Astronomical Compendium. Accession Number M.51-1963. Made by Allen's workshop for James I, 1617. Victoria and Albert Museum
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