The sector, also known as a proportional compass or military compass, was a major calculating instrument in use from the end of the sixteenth century until the nineteenth century. It is an instrument consisting of two rulers of equal length joined by a hinge. A number of scales are inscribed upon the instrument which facilitate various mathematical calculations. It was used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots. Its several scales permitted easy and direct solutions of problems in gunnery, surveying and navigation. The sector derives its name from the fourth proposition of the sixth book of Euclid, where it is demonstrated that similar triangles have their like sides proportional. It has four parts, two legs with a pivot (the articulation), a quadrant and a clamp (the curved part at the end of the leg) that enables the compass to function as a gunner's quadrant.

A sector instrument is a general term for a class of mass spectrometer that uses a static electric or magnetic sector or some combination of the two (separately in space) as a mass analyzer. A popular combination of these sectors has been the BEB (magnetic-electric-magnetic). Most modern sector instruments are double-focusing instruments (first developed by A. Dempster, K. Bainbridge and J. Mattauch in 1936) in that they focus the ion beams both in direction and velocity.