The caliper (also called vernier, sliding gauge, meter foot or vernier caliper) is a measuring instrument, mainly of external diameters, internal diameters and depths, used in the industrial field. The vernier is an auxiliary scale that slides along a major scale to allow accurate fractional readings of the smallest division. To achieve this, a vernier scale is graduated in a number of equal divisions in the same length as n-1 divisions of the main scale; both scales are marked in the same direction.1 It is an extremely delicate instrument and must be handled with skill, care, delicacy, taking care not to scratch or bend it (especially the depth gauge). Filings, which can lodge between its parts and cause damage, must be especially avoided.
The first instrument with similar characteristics was found in a fragment on the island of Giglio, near the Italian coast, dated to the 6th century BC. Although considered rare, it was used by Greeks and Romans.
During the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), a similar instrument was also used in China, made of bronze, found with an inscription of the day, month and year in which it was made.
The Portuguese cosmographer and mathematician Pedro Nunes (1492-1577) - who invented the vernier or nonius - is attributed the origin of the vernier caliper.
Vernier has also been called the vernier caliper, because there are those who attribute its invention to the geometer Pierre Vernier (1580-1637), although what he really invented was the Vernier slide rule, which has been confused with the vernier invented by Pedro Nunes. In Spanish the vernier voice is frequently used to define this scale.
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