Pair of 121/2 inch dividers made during the seventeenth century, maker and place of production unknown.

Dividers are mathematical instruments used in technical drawing to measure and copy a distance from one surface to another when creating copies of a drawing and for calculation using a sector where the points of each arm are positioned against the corresponding scales on each arm of the sector, enabling a claculation to be made. The design of dividers changed very little over the centuries.