Parallel Rule with Protractor and Plotting Scale 1796

Curator: The Metropolitan Museum holds this piece entitled "Parallel Rule with Protractor and Plotting Scale," created in 1796 by Lebbeus Dod, here in the United States. It seems to be a drawing, maybe a print, rendered in graphite. Editor: My first thought is the incredible precision involved in its creation! I see it as more than a utilitarian object; it whispers of aspirations towards progress, reason, and scientific advancement, a very particular masculine intellectual world. Curator: Exactly. It's the kind of tool we associate with navigation, architecture, and surveying—professions linked to colonial expansion and the claiming of territories. We have to consider what lands are being charted, by whom, and for what purposes. What kind of social structures facilitated or arose with the necessity of these precision tools? Who had the resources to engage in their making and their application? Editor: Precisely! Dod’s tools helped construct power structures, enforcing boundaries that defined ownership, access, and ultimately, control over land and resources. It’s important to understand the colonial gaze embedded within it. Curator: Absolutely. This was likely created using specialized skills and materials, and represents not just intellectual labor but very real physical labor as well. I wonder what were the actual conditions in which Dod and his craftsmen labored. Were these items made with mass production techniques? Were there standards and regulations on the precision measurements these tools rendered? Editor: When we consider objects like these, especially from this era, we have to acknowledge the human cost that went into it—both the physical toll on those creating the work and the displacement caused by the very use of those precision markings. The line these tools drew did not just divide territories, but futures and fates, too. Curator: Indeed. Viewing this tool prompts questions of the role that specific expertise and material wealth has in configuring our social world. Thank you. Editor: Thank you, viewing this with you has prompted valuable perspectives, emphasizing its cultural impacts in complex ways.