Michiel Coignet

[1] Michiel Coignet's father Gillis (also known as Egidius) was a goldsmith and maker of astronomical and mathematical instruments in Antwerp and was married to Brigitte Anthonis Hendriks.

The wijnroeier was a municipal employee tasked with measuring the wine barrels that arrived in the city in order to calculate the taxes due.

This is an indication that his mother likely kept her deceased husband's workshop in operation until her son could become a master of the Guild of Saint Luke.

[8] Coignet invented several instruments and corresponded with Galileo Galilei (from 1588), Gerhard Mercator, Godefroy Wendelin, Ludolph van Ceulen and Fabrizio Mordente, whom he met during the latter's 1584 sojourn in Antwerp.

In 2008 an example of this instrument, likely made in Coignet's workshop, surfaced during an exhibition on the history of the Jesuit Seminary of Tournai.

He added an introduction on projections and 13 maps to some editions of Ortelius' atlas published as Epitome theatri orbis terrarum d'Ortelius (1601).

[18] In 1621 Coignet drew a map that showed the preferred itinerary for merchants and merchandise traveling from Flanders to Milan (two copies are preserved one of which is kept in the library of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven).

He taught the subject including during his European tour when he instructed Marin Getaldić and the officers of Archduke Albert.

Getaldić was later in Paris from where he informed Coignet in a letter dated 15 February 1600 about the mathematician François Viète.

[20] Coignet was involved in various military engineering projects mainly related to fortification and wrote about ballistics in one of his treatises (El uso de las doze diuisiones geometricas, 1618).

[5] In 1608 he designed together with the municipal surveyor Mattheus van Herle a fortification in the area of the St Michael's Abbey.

During this time he may also have been involved in the reparation of the city walls and the design of a new fort on the left bank of the Scheldt river.

In 1618 he discussed with Don Iñigo de Borgia, the commander of the Spanish garrison, the construction of two guard posts on the city walls.