This compass is believed to have belonged to the Chekhov family. It was donated to the museum by Valentina Chekhova, the widow of the writer’s nephew, Sergey Chekhov. A dividing compass is a device for marking out locations on the surface of details and workpieces. It is distinguished by its sharpened points that act as scribers.

A compass consists of a pair of sharpened steel legs connected by a spring or rivet. The distance between them is known as the spread. It is fixed with an adjusting screw or hinge. Anton Chekhov wrote about the skill of working with compasses in his 1886 short story “Art”,

The first compasses were invented over 2000 years ago. Perfect circles drawn in Ancient Babylon have been well preserved. At the beginning of the Common Era, compasses were used by Roman and Gallic craftsmen and builders. Archeologists found not only drawing instruments but also compasses with curved edges — the prototypes of modern outside calipers used for measuring length and scale.