Navigational aids, antique?

Your in an interesting position with these. According to the Kelvin Hughes web site the company was founded in 1941 so the 1917 would predate their existence by 24 years. You can check them out by going to...

http://kelvinhughes.info/index.php?option=com_cont...

Does the date difference mean you have a knockoff? No. There have been other items listed for sale and can be found by simply doing a Google search of "Kelvin Hughes 1917."

Keep us posted on what you learn as this will be an interesting story for you to tell and us to learn from.

Without seeing them, it's very difficult to say. Unfortunately, many very reputable antiques dealers have no knowledge of navigation, and will in all good faith sell a shoddy and non-functional replica as a genuine antique, because they simply do not know any better. Be VERY cautious of buying "antique" navigational tools sight-unseen, especially on eBay and the like. Many "antique sextants" for sale are actually "camel-jockey 2000s", small brass sextants made from melted down shell casings, replicas of the ones which were once used by Bedouin merchants navigating their caravans across deserts. Which are kind of cool in their own right, and look nice hanging on a wall, but are of limited utility for marine navigation and of no value as an antique.

That's a good question.I would put that up on your yahoo web search(or Google).That might find you the info you require.An antique needs to be over a 100 years old if it is an english make.I think it is 70 years elsewhere.An antique usually requires a note of providence which is a piece of paper supporting its origin.That's if you want to sell it.I would say your stamp applies to when it was made.But be careful.There are unfortunately lots of copies of these items.It would be interesting to know how much you paid? You could also try a site like ebay,which has an antique section.I have just checked on Yahoo.There's heaps about your things.

as benthic said, it's a sextant, and if you do the calculations manually it takes about 10-20 minutes to get a line of position, or about 30 seconds with a calculator ( readers you're dating yourselves if you mention your HP pocket calculator or the Tamaya 1999 version!) and you can also use the stars in the morning or evening during twilight, (which is actually the best method ) , and the moon and the 5 bright planets is it still used? widely by yachts people and should be by all merchant and Navy ships......there are three reasons a GPS will stop..water ( it gets wet ) electricity ( the power fails, the batteries run out) and good old gravity ( whoops! ) The fourth reason, especially now adays where the military is absolutely dependent on it, is war.....the FIRST thing that will happen in a major war is the GPS is scrambled either deliberately or as security precaution, not to mention ASAT's launched to take out the GPS birds and, as it says on all the charts: "The prudent mariner will not rely solely on any single aid to navigation"

Boatin' in VA! gave a very good answer which encouraged me to research also. Oddly there are a lot of Kelvin Hughes items listed on eBay.

Kelvin Hughes "LTD" actually existed from 1876 to 1918. This site offers production records from that period. http://www.nahste.ac.uk/cgi-bin/view_isad.pl?id=GB... Apparently the name was dropped in 1918 and resurrected in 1947.

This site lists custodian of records for the early and latter periods, http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/0311kel.html

A good question