With the invention some 200 years ago of the goniometer, an instrument for measuring the angles between the faces of a crystal, the science of crystallography was born. The goniometer made possible the discovery of the fundamental laws of descriptive crystallography: that the angles between the facial planes are determined by the chemical composition of the crystal and that the relative orientations of the facial planes follow a simple rule, the law of rational positions.
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H. Hauptman, J. Karle, Solution of the Phase Problem I: The Centrosymmetric Crystal, American Crystallographic Association monograph no. 3, Polycrystal Book Service, Dayton, Ohio (1953).
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© 1989 American Institute of Physics.
1989
American Institute of Physics
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