Stammer Colorimeter
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Object Details
- Franz Schmidt & Haensch
- Description
- Karl Stammer, a manager of a German factory that processed beet sugar, published an account of a colorimeter for grading sugar juices in 1874. The accompanying illustration shows an example made by Franz Schmidt & Haensch, an instrument house in Berlin that had been established in 1864 and that is still in business today.
- Stammer colorimeters were imported into the United States as early as 1896. In its 1926 ad for Stammer colorimeters, the Fisher Scientific Co. in Pittsburgh noted that they cost $190 and could be used with such substances as sugar solutions, oils, shellacs, varnishes, paints, and filter press runnings.
- The Stammer colorimeter has two parallel tubes, one holding a disc of a standard color and the other holding the sample to be analyzed. Light reflected from a milk glass plate at the base passes up through the tubes, and is refracted by a set of prisms and viewed through an eyepiece. There is a plunger in the sample tube that can be moved up and down, and an identical one in the standard tube that cannot.
- An inscription on this example reads "Franz Schmidt & Haensch / Werkstätten für Wissenschaftliche Instrumente / BERLIN S. 42." A few design elements, such as the shape of the housing for the prisms, suggest that it was made in the 1920s.
- Ref: Fisher Scientific Co.,
(Pittsburgh, 1926), p. 243. - K. Stammer, Lehrbuch der Zuckerfabrikation (Braunschweig, 1874), p. 602.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- CH.335519
- catalog number
- 335519
- accession number
- 321714
- Object Name
- Colorimeter
- Physical Description
- wood (overall material)
- iron (overall material)
- nickel silver (overall material)
- Measurements
- case: 56.5 cm x 16.2 cm x 14 cm; 22 1/4 in x 6 3/8 in x 5 1/2 in
- cylinder: 305 mm x 32 mm; 12 in x 1 1/4 in
- instrument: 52 cm x 13.3 cm; 20 1/2 in x 5 1/4 in
- overall in case: 22 3/8 in x 5 1/2 in x 6 3/8 in; 56.8325 cm x 13.97 cm x 16.1925 cm
- overall: case fragment: 3/16 in x 5 1/16 in x 2 13/16 in; .47625 cm x 12.85875 cm x 7.14375 cm
- place made
- Germany: Berlin, Berlin
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Chemistry
- Saccharimeters
- Measuring & Mapping
- National Museum of American History
- Subject
- Optics
- Color
- Sugar
- Record ID
- nmah_2951
- Metadata Usage (text)
- CC0
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a0-eb63-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
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