Contact goniometer – a simple goniometer, only larger crystals can be measured.

Reflecting goniometer – invented by W. H. Wollaston in the early 19th century, is based on the reflection of light from smooth crystal faces. It is more precise, the measurements are more accurate and it can measure even very small crystals.
Various models of reflecting goniometers were developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, of which the single-circle and two-circle ones were in regular use in crystallography.

Gjuro Pilar

The first goniometric measurements of crystals in Croatia were carried out by the first Croatian geologist Gjuro Pilar. He was a very good draftsman, as evidenced by his original parallel perspective drawings of crystals. Among his manuscripts (in the Archive of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts) are drawings of minerals from Moslavačka gora - quartz marked „Čađavac from Moslavina" (Smoky quartz from Moslavina) and a drawing of tourmaline crystals from Gornja Jelenska.

Gjuro Pilar also passed on his knowledge of mineralogy to his students. Among them are the renowned Bulgarian professors of geology at the University of Sofia, G. Zlatarski and L. Vankov, and G. Bončev, the founder of mineralogical and petrological research in Bulgaria. Under the guidance of Gjuro Pilar, Bončev revised the axial elements of potassium dichromate, and in his dissertation he states that he drew the crystals according to Pilar's method.

Gjuro Pilar was born in 1846 in Brod na Savi, today's Slavonski Brod, where he finished elementary school. He received his high school education in Osijek and Zagreb, and studied in Brussels, where he gained an education in numerous areas of natural science, primarily mineralogy and geology, but also mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry and biology. In 1869, he defended his dissertation entitled “Les Révolutions de l’Écorce du Globe”. After further training in Paris, he acquired knowledge in mineralogy, geology and paleontology.

In 1870, he returned to Croatia and was employed as a clerk in the Department of Mineralogy and Geology of the Natural History Department of the National Museum in Zagreb, and from 1878 to 1893 he was the director of the Department. As the first professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Zagreb, Pilar taught mineralogy, petrography, geology, paleontology, and even astronomy, and was elected rector of the University in 1884. Gjuro Pilar died in 1893, at the age of 48.

Mijo Kišpatić

Croatian petrographer and mineralogist Mijo Kišpatić (1851 – 1926) conducted goniometric measurements of minerals on a horizontal circle reflecting goniometer (R. Fuess, Berlin-Steglitz), which he acquired for the museum in 1895. He published the results of his measurements in the book „Rude u Hrvatskoj" in 1901 for minerals that were known in Croatia until then. In addition, he was one of the most important popularizers of science of that time, publishing articles and books from various fields of natural science, the most famous of which are „Slike iz rudstva", „Slike iz geologije", „Iz bilinskog svijeta", „Kukci" and „Ribe". It is particularly important for the Museum that he acquired by purchase, several hundreds exceptionally beautiful and valuable specimens of minerals from the world's most famous deposits.
Mijo Kišpatić was born in 1851 in Osijek. He attended elementary school and high school in Osijek and Đakovo, and in 1873 he completed his studies in natural sciences, mathematics and physics in Vienna under the guidance of the famous Austrian professor Gustav Tschermak. He earned his doctorate in natural sciences on the genesis of semi-opal in altered andesite from Gleichenberg in Zagreb in 1881, and in 1882 he habilitated in scientific petrography. In the period from 1873 to 1894 he was employed as a teacher, first at the high school in Osijek, then at the Economic Forestry Institute in Križevci, and finally at the Real Gymnasium in Zagreb. He was elected a corresponding member of the then Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1883, and ten years later he became its full member. In 1894, he was appointed director of the Mineralogical and Petrographic Department of the National Museum and a public associate university professor of mineralogy and petrography. During his scientific career, he published 180 scientific, professional and popular works. Despite his versatile activities and enormous contribution to natural history and science, Mijo Kišpatić was a very modest and self-effacing person. »He also managed to make himself completely unknown: His works have been published for decades, they have spread throughout our people, everyone reads them, and no one pays attention to their author. Mišo Kišpatić is like a pseudonym.« (excerpt from the work: »Mišo Kišpatić« by Fran Tućan, published in 1930). Mijo Kišpatić retired in 1918, and died in 1926 after a long and serious illness.