  The Quadrantid shower, one of the most intense showers, has been observed at
the beginning of January each year. However, the origin of the meteors is still
unknown. It was Hasegawa (1979) who first suggested comet C/1490 Y1 to be the
likely origin of the shower based on the historical records of East Asia. We
analyse the records of Jo-Seon-Wang-Jo-Sil-Lok (the Annals of the Joseon
Dynasty in ancient Korea) and calculate the preliminary orbital elements of
comet C/1490 Y1 using a modified Gauss method. We find that comet C/1490 Y1 was
a periodic one and its orbital path was very similar to that of the Quadrantid
meteor stream. The determined orbital elements are perifocal passage time
Tp=2265652.2983 days (7.8 Jan. 1491 in UT), perifocal distance q=0.769 AU,
eccentricity e=0.747, semimajor axis a=3.04 AU, argument of the perifocus
omega=164.03 degrees, longitude of ascending node Omega=283.00 degrees, and
inclination i=70.22 degrees for the epoch of J2000.0. We, therefore, conclude
that our result verifies the suggestion that the comet C/1490 Y1 is the origin
of the Quandrantid meteor shower, but was a periodic comet. We dicuss a
possible link between this comet and the asteroid 2003 EH1 as well.
