Ecuador 1038-1040

     In 1986 Ecuador issued a set of three stamps and a souvenir sheet of four stamps in 1986 to commemorate the equatorial expedition to Ecuador. The individual stamps depict Charles-Marie de la Condamine, Moldonado (a Spanish participant), and one of the baseline monuments. Each stamp also has an instrument which depicts a sextant rather than a quadrant which was the instrument used by both Condamine and Maupertuis.
     The quadrant is also shown on French (2016) and Finnish (741) stamps. In an article in The Carto-Philatelist Vol. 32, No. 3 (September 1987), p.78 David Gray comments concerning the Ecuador stamps, “Each stamp has a surveying instrument, though the design appears to be in error in that it shows a sextant rather than a quadrant.”