Browse Items (54 total)

NOT YET LOCATED. The effects of electricity on the body can be traced back to 1745 when Pieter van Musschenbroek, testing out the one of the first Leiden jars, stated that "I felt myself struck in my arms, shoulders, and breast. I lost my breath, and…

NOT YET LOCATED. The description below is not for these exact items. It belongs to a very similar item, which might nonetheless be helpful to the viewer. This cardboard aid for astronomy students was published by Henry Whitall, 512 Arch Street,…

This device demonstrates “Newton’s Rings,” colorful interference fringes caused by a thin air layer first discussed by Isaac Newton in a communication to the Royal Society in December 1675, and presented an expanded account in his book "Optics"…

The name derives from the Greek word “to cheat”. The essential component of this device is a glass disk upon which are arranged figures radially, representing a moving object in successive positions. On turning the disk, and projecting a light beam…

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.…

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

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.

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…

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…

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…