Repeating instruments Meaning, Definition & Usage

Definitions
  1. (Astron. & Surv.), instruments for observing angles, as a circle, theodolite, etc., so constructed that the angle may be measured several times in succession, and different, but successive and contiguous, portions of the graduated limb, before reading off the aggregate result, which aggregate, divided by the number of measurements, gives the angle, freed in a measure from errors of eccentricity and graduation.

Webster 1913