The restored 1913 Foster flashpoint apparatus.
Issue 31 of Museum Notes recounts some of the puzzles that have confronted the museum curator when it comes to identifying the nature and use of some of the items that are donated to the museum.
Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.
Front view of the Siemens IA Elmiskop in its
original location at UC Environmental Health and Safety.
Issue 30 of Museum Notes highlights the recently acquired, circa 1964, Siemens Elmiskop 1A Microscope now on display on the upper mezzanine of the Chemistry-Biology Library in 503 Rieveschl.
Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.
Dr. William B. Jensen introduces his new series:
Like most museums, only about 25% of the holdings of the Oesper Collections
in the History of Chemistry are on public display at a given time. In order to make the remaining 75% available in some form, it was decided to initiate a series of short museum booklets, each dedicated to a particular instrument or laboratory technique of historical importance to the science of chemistry.
Each booklet would include not only photographs of both displayed and stored museum artifacts related to the subject at hand, but also a short discussion of the history of the instrument or technique and of its impact on the development of chemistry as a whole. Several of these booklets are expansions of short articles which have previously appeared in either the bimonthly series Museum Notes, which is posted on the Oesper website, or the series Ask the Historian, which appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education between 2003 and 2012.
You can access the booklets by clicking here.
Typical modern-day fleakers with their patented caps.
The 29th issue of Museum Notes highlights a recent innovation in laboratory glassware known as the “fleaker” and traces its historical antecedents to a late 19th-century innovation known as the “beaker flask.”
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Two new sets of science education videos are now available in JoVE, a peer-reviewed video journal. Now you can access these two new sections:
Dr. William Jensen explains “The Strange Blowpipe 19th Century Miners Used to Analyze Ore” in the Wired article at http://www.wired.com/2014/08/crazy-blowpipe-apparatus/#slide-id-1232521.
For more topics like these from the history of chemistry visit the Oesper Collections at http://digital.libraries.uc.edu/oesper/.
A brass hydrometer jar with handle and thermometer and two metal hydrometers probably designed to monitor the fermentation of beer.
The 28th issue of Museum Notes highlights yet another scientific instrument produced by the 19th-century Cincinnati inventor Henry Twitchell (1816-1875).
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A circa 1928 Bock-Benedict colorimeter
The 27th issue of Museum Notes tells the story of a UC graduate who, inspired by his undergraduate chemistry teacher, went on to become a nationally prominent physiological chemist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Reproduction of a Marsh apparatus
The 26th issue of Museum Notes deals with the historic Marsh test for arsenic and its role in both the history of forensic chemistry and detective fiction.
Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.
Examples of surviving half-liter Grenet cells (Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection). The cell on the right has its Zn anode raised.
The 25th issue of Museum Notes is the last installment of our series on historic voltaic cells and highlights the famous dichromate cell of Poggendorff and Warington.
Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.