Browse Items (54 total)

The telegraph was invented by the artist and scientist Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872), who conceived the idea of the printing telegraph during an ocean voyage to Europe in 1832. The actuation of an electromagnet in the receiver would cause a…

The tangent galvanometer is a current measuring device. It was first described in an 1837 paper by Claude-Servais-Mathias Pouillet (1790-1868), who later employed this sensitive form of galvanometer to verify Ohm's law. To use the galvanometer, it is…

A tachometer (revolution-counter, Tach, rev-counter, RPM gauge) is an instrument measuring the rotation speed of a shaft or disk, as in a motor or other machine. The device usually displays the revolutions per minute (RPM) on a calibrated analogue…

This model shows a geometric surface called a hyperboloid of one sheet. It was used in mathematics and architecture classes. The wires are straight lines. For any point on the surface, there are two straight lines lying entirely on the surface which…

A sextant is used in nautical navigation measure the angle between two visible objects. The angle, and the time it was measured, can be used to calculate a position line on a nautical or aeronautical chart. A common use of the sextant is to sight the…

Many pieces of demonstration equipment must be rotated to show a desired effect. A Rotator is a device with a crank that can rapidly rotate a small horizontal platform about an axis. Other pieces of equipment, like Newton’s Color Wheel, attached to…

This was a popular piece of demonstration apparatus, in which the operation of the motor is signaled by a ringing of the bell. The instrument is an inverted revolving electromagnet, with a gearing system added to strike the bell every hundred…

Prisms have been standard laboratory equipment since Isaac Newton used one in 1666 to study the nature of the spectrum. Most or all of these prisms were made by Duboscq in Paris.

An instrument with a movable pointer used for mechanical measurements of the area of an (irregular) plane figure.

This picture was taken around the year 1900. The laboratory room was in the attic of Reid Hall and was heated by a potbelly stove. On the right is a good example of a large vacuum pump that resembles those sold in the 1850's by Chamberlain of Boston.…