Known as an equal hour horary quadrant, it allowed its user to tell the approximate time of day based on the position of the Sun and the time of year.
The brass contraption – the second oldest dated British scientific instrument – is thought to have been discovered in the mid-1800s by an ancestor of its current owner.
It was passed down through his family who eventually emigrated to New Zealand and Australia, and was later uncovered by Christopher Becker in the mid-1970s, lurking in an old bag of pipe fittings in a shed on the family farm.
The trinket lived as a paperweight on his desk for decades until he took the decision to sell it at the Bonham's Fine Clocks and Scientific Instrument Sale on December 13.
Mr Becker said: "I believe something of this significance deserves a little more recognition than just sitting on my desk as a personal reminder of what began a lifelong passion for collecting antiques."
The quadrant, which dates back to 1396, is the oldest of a group of similar instruments dated 1398, 1399 and 1400 and is only predated by the Chaucer astrolabe, a time-telling device from 1326 which can be viewed in the British Museum.
On one face is a scale of the days of the month sitting above 12 concentric arcs – one for each month of the year – on which a table of noon solar altitudes is marked.
Above this are two rings marking out years and leap years, and within that lies a figure of a stag with a coronet around its throat – an emblem linked to Richard II.
To tell the time the user would find the noon solar altitude on the table before turning it over and stretching a string against the corresponding mark on a degree scale.
Read more at The Telegraph
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