Within recent years fairly exhaustive studies have been made on many aspects on American Science and Technology. To make a comprehensive study of American scientific instruments and instrument makers in the American Colonies is no simple matter, partly because of an indifference to the subject in the past, and partly because of the great volume of sources that must be sifted to accomplish it.

The present study attempts only in part to accomplish this aim, being no more than a preliminary compilation of the scientific instruments known to have been used during the first two centuries of American colonial existence. It merely attempts to assemble all the data that is presently available in scattered sources, and to organize it in a usable form for the student and historian of American science.