Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin
Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil
Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez
Veni Sancte Spiritus Et Emitte Coelitus
Pier Paolo Vergerio, the Elder
Victimae Paschali Laudes Immolent Christiani
Vicariate Apostolic of Northern Victoria Nyanza
Vicariate Apostolic of Southern Victoria Nyanza
Jean-Paul-Alban Villeneuve-Barcement
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc
Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Visits to the Blessed Sacrament
Visitation Convent, Georgetown
Diocese of Viterbo and Toscanella
Sts. Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia
Ecclesiastical and Religious Vocation
Eugène-Melchior, Vicomte de Vogüé
Inventor of the instrument which bears his name, b. at Ornans, Franche-Comte, c. 1580; d. there, 14 Sept., 1637. His father was his teacher in science. He became captain and castellan, for the King of Spain, of the castle at Ornans, and councillor and director general of moneys in the County of Burgundy. At Brussels, 1631, he published and dedicated to the Infanta, the treatise "La construction, l'usage, et les propriétés du quadrant nouveau de mathématiques", describing the ingenious device on which his fame now rests. To a quadrant with a primary scale in half degrees Vernier proposed to attach a movable sector, thirty-one half degrees in length but divided into thirty equal parts (each part consisting then of a half degree plus one minute). In measuring an angle, minutes could be easily reckoned by noticing which division line of the sector coincided with a division line of the quadrant. Christopher Clavius (q.v.) had mentioned the idea but had not proposed to attach permanently the scale to the alidade. The name vernier, now commonly applied to a small movable scale attached to a sextant, barometer, or other graduated instrument, was given by Lalande who showed that the previous name nonius, after Peter Nunez, belonged more properly to a different contrivance.
DELAMBRE, Histoire de l'astronomie moderne, II (Paris, 1821), 119-25; LALANDE, Bibligraphie astronomique (Paris, 1803), 196.
Paul H. Linehan.