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SIS Bulletin Issue 63 Scientific Inst~ ument Society . ~,~ ~ ~ ~ b Bulletin December No. 63 1999 Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society issN 0956-8271 For Table of Contents, see back cover President Gerard Turner Vice-President Howard Dawes Honorary Committee Stuart 1albot, Chairman Gloria Clifton, Secreta~ John Didcock, Treasurer Willem Hackmann, Editor James Stratton, Meetings Secretary Silke Ackermann Ron Bnstow Simon Cheifetz Alexander Crum-Ewmg Liba Taub Trevor Waterman Membership and Administrative Matters The Executive Officer (Wg Cdr Geoffrey Bennett) 31 High Street Stanford in the Vale Fanngdon Tel: 01367 710223 Oxon SN7 8LH Fax: 01367 718963 e-mail: [email protected] See outside back ctnx,r for infin'mation on membership Editorial Matters Dr. Willem D Hackmann Mu~,um of the History of Science Old Ashmolean Building Tel: 01865 277282 (office) Broad Street Fax: 01865 277288 Oxford OX1 3AZ Tel: 01608 811110 (home) e-mail: [email protected] Society's Website http://www.sts.org.uk Advertising See 'Summa~, of Advertising Services' panel elsewhere m this Bulletin. Further enquiries to the Executive Officer. Organization of Meetings Mr James Stratton I01 New Bond Street Tel: 020 7629 6602 l.xmdon WIY 0AS Fax: 020 7495 3536 Typesetting and Printing Lithoflow Ltd 26,-~ Wharfdale Road Tel: 020 7833 2344 King's Cr(~ Fax: 020 7833 8150 [a~ndon NI 9RY Price: £6 per ~ue, including back numbers where available. (Enquiries to the Executive Officer) The Scientific Instrument Society is Registered Chanty No. 326733 The Scientific Instrument Society 1999 ..... -.qlt~ Chairman's Address 'The future is not what it used to be' Since the fimnding of the Society in 1983 Mumum of the History of Science in this trend are already well established the strides made by the Bulletin is Cambridge, when the Mu~um was and are a pointer to future collecting immediately apparent from viewing the given well over a thousand pocket areas. Mumum selectivity will be hard full ~ries fn)m No. I to the print issue. calculators which were publicly inm~- put to keep up with the pace of change In the past seventeen years successive duced in the early 1970" and their display and pulse of scientific inh~rmation but Editors have contributed to a society generated enormous public interest. computer search techniques will enable style and content that is binding between Their everyday hmiliarity struck a chord rapid targeting of many arcane and members. From a demographic fa)int of with all generations. The fields of wire- mysterious areas. view it is inter~ting to note that whereas less, telegraphy, radio and recorded USA membership was initially a high sound in all forms, with all the 20'h 50%, the current ratio is 30% USA, 37% Looking back, the Society has achieved century advances, continue to exert Eur(~)e, 30% UK and 3% rest of the much in the seventeen years since its tremendous nostalgic lamination. In i world. founding and has bopefully set in train a sound the progression from wax cylin- tradition that future generations can refer ders, shellac 78s, vinyl LPs, and now to with real profit and insight. The thrill As the door closes on the 2(P century it is Compact Di~s and DVD mini-discs, of technological re-discovery and scien- rather tantalising to predict what recent illustrate the sheer scale and cr~tion tific principles in all their infinite variety, technology will be found collectible, for collecting in this field alone. No doubt a reassuring and constant pendulum in affordable and most important desirable. the London salesrooms will advance the our progress as pilgrims of science. An indicator occurred in 1990 whilst Jim cause of these and many other areas of Bennett was Curator of the Whipple technology, in the UK the fairs catering to Stuart Talbot, FRAS Editorial Instruments of Science To celebrate the last issue of the Bulletin sions of apparatus invented during the sics. ~ Rutherford characterized it as of this Millennium collectors and cura- first half of the 19~ century, and some 'the most original and wonderful instru- tors were asked which they considered to (such as the double-acting piston air ment in scientific history'. be ten key scientific instruments of the pump) go back to the second half of the last one hundred years. This has turned 18'h century. Thus, many instrument- The 20~ century devices mentioned so far out to be one of those impossible to designs had a remarkably long life and will fit into a collector's cupboard or a answer 't(mgue in cheek' conundrums. well-defined archetypes. Even new glass- museum's exhibition case, but what to do The technique of scientific instrument- and-brass instruments, such as William with the successor to Wiison's cloud making changed little over the centuries Crookes' pocket-spinthariscopeor C.T.R. chamber, the seventy-two-inch liquid until the 1940". One may certainly be Wilson's cloud chamber, had their ante- hydrogen bubble chamber completed in tempted to question the term 'scientific' cedents in the old. Crookes' instrument 1959 at the Lawn.~K'e Berkeley Labora- when putting a Renaissance astrolabe for counting the scintillations of alpha alongside an 18'h century electrical ma- tory? Many modem instruments from particles when hitting a screen of cyclotrons to solar neutrino detectors are chine or a 19'h century spectroscope, but phosphorescent material was introduced little had changed in the actual techni- huge and can only he coped with by in 1903. It consisted of a trace of radium large wealthy national institutions.Thus, ques of manufacture. At the dawn of the salt placed 1 millimetre from a small zinc the National Museum of Scotland pre- 20'h century most scientific instruments sulphide screen fixed at one end of a were still made of brass, glass, wood serves the 20-ton bubble chamber built in short brass tube; the scintillationsbeing 1963 at the Rutherford High Energy (mainly oak or mahogany) and iron. observed (and counted) through a con- Laboratory at Harwell (see this Lssue). Brass, had for centuries been the pre- vex lens at the other end of the tube (see But what should he done with even ferred metal in the construction as it this issue).So, in es.,amcewe have a small bigger instruments? What will happen, could be easily and accurately worked, for instance, to the UK's premier radio soldered, polished, engraved with scales, tube-magnifier as used for centuries in nature studies to which has been added a telescope, Jodrell Bank, when it finally and lacquered to prevent deterioration of mild radioactive source and phosphor- becomes obsolete? Perhaps the best that the surface. Their rich golden colour, can be done is to exhibit a scale mi~lel of display of technical skill, and the fact escent screen. WiLson invented his cloud chamber at the very end of the 19'h it in one of our museums. Certain],,; such that the mode of operation was obvious scientific mstallafions must fall outside in the design made them a delight for century in the Cavendish Laboratory in the scope of the private collector! collectors and instrument historians. Cambridge as a means of modelling Their journey from laboratory cupboard certain cloud phenomena. ]t harked back to collector's cupboard or museum to the 'cloud examiner' or nepheloscope The sheer size of many modem instru- exhibition case has been relatively easy. invented by the American meteorok~gist ments is not the only concern concreting James Pollard in the 18.'krP.In 1910 Wilson fmtential collectors. Another is that since constructed the version of his device the introduction of new matenals such as So at the beginning of the 20~ century linked to a photographic camera to aluminium and perspex in the postwar laboratory scientists and teachers of record the phenomena which became peri(~, most soentific instruments of the science had at their disposal a large the standard laboratory versi(m for many last fifty years or so have little aesthetic number of sophisticated and elegant years for photographing tracks of ioniz- appeal. An Eden-Rolt slip gauge com- instruments. Many were improved ver- ing radiation in subatomic particle phy- parator of 1918 with its delicate ]evers, I~lk.tin of tl~ Scientific Imtrm.~t ~xx.t~ No. ~1 (l~) accurate to one-millionth of an inch, will 'science' - is it a methodology or a 7. mass spectrometer (Franos W. Aston, be of more interest to the collector than culture? Secondly, has an instrument got 1918 but not current until the early 1950') the infinitely more accurate 'black box' to be a unique device or can it be an laser interferometer coupled to a compu- assemblage of devices working t(~ether 8. gas-absorption chromatograph (Erika ter. towards a specific function? An electronic Cremer 1940") calculator can be seen as a scientific This bnngs us to a much less trivial instrument in which the electronics have 9. MRI (nuclear magnetic resonance ctmcern brought about by the electronic taken over the function of the mechanical imaging) (E Bloch and E. Purcell, 1952; revolution which has changed the char- componen~ of the previous generation. Mallard's prototype early 1970") acter of modern instruments more than But what about the c(nnputer which can anything el~. Up to the Second World do many things besides calculating? Is it I0. peptide synthesizer (R.B Merrifield War most instruments were anak~ue a single instrument, or is it made up of an and J.M. Stewart 1965) devices recording transient phenomena. a~semblage of discrete devices all with A typical example of the impact of their own histories? Is it perhaps more Not~: electronics (originally the thermionic apt when dealing with the 20~ century not to refer to instruments but to the valve or tube and from the 1950" For general guides, see Paolo Brenni, semiconductors) is the des,elopment of 'hardware of science'? 'Physics Instruments in the Twentieth the electrocardiagraph At the heart of Century' in John Krige and Dominique this instrument was Willem Einthoven's It could well be that the next century will string galvanometer invented in the early Pestre, eds, Science in the Twentieth see an increasing chasm between private (Harwtx~ Academic Publishers, The instrument filled two Centu~.
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