Scientific Instruments

World Meteorological Day – early meteorology in Australia

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Lightning strikes on the Sydney Harbour, 7 December, 1892. The photograph was exposed over four minutes giving an impression of five separate strikes. Government Astronomer H C Russell calculated the height of the Darling Harbour flash from the cloud to the water to be approximately 1540 feet.

Lieutenant William Dawes, who came out to Australia with the First Fleet, made the first recorded meteorological observations in Australia but the next set were probably made from Parramatta Observatory between October 1822 and March 1824. 

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Flash of insight led to brilliant Australian invention

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Atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Powerhouse Museum Collection.


Dr Alan Walsh had an ‘aha’ moment while gardening in 1954. Straight away, he phoned a friend and said: We’ve been measuring the wrong bloody thing! A CSIRO chemist, he wasn’t referring to delphiniums (blue) or geraniums (red). He was thinking about atoms that emit characteristic colours when heated in a flame – elements such as strontium (red) and selenium (blue).

At that time, the concentration of certain atoms in a sample was determined by measuring the amount of light the sample EMITS when heated in a flame. He realised it would be better to measure how much light of a particular colour (wavelength) the sample ABSORBS. He thought his ‘atomic absorption’ method would be more accurate than the emission method.

Now Walsh had been thinking about this problem off and on for years. In his ‘aha’ moment he realised it was possible to get around the major stumbling block: the need to filter out the emitted light so it didn’t swamp the measuring device.

Walsh soon set up an experiment to test his ideas. It worked brilliantly. With the help of other scientists and technicians, he designed a new type of lamp containing the element to be measured. His technique did prove to be more accurate than the old method – and it was more sensitive, and useful for many more elements. His work led to the creation of a local industry making atomic absorption spectrophotometers (AAS). It also led to scientific and practical advances in many fields as CSIRO scientists developed new techniques and labs around the world purchased the instruments.

One of these instruments was offered to the Museum a few years ago by Tim and Kylie Bennett from Alstonville in northern NSW. They were planning to upgrade to a new AAS for their analytical service lab, and the donation of their old one was very welcome. They told us its original owner was the University of New England, where it had been used for studying domestic ruminant physiology.

Now that more information is available online, it appears highly likely that the ruminants studied were sheep and the instrument was used to show (among other things) that they need copper and zinc in their diet to grow good quality wool. A nice connection to our wool and textile collections!

More information is also available about the work of the Bennetts’ company, Soiltec. As its name suggests, it was involved in analysing agricultural soils, but it also analysed plant material. This work was largely aimed at helping farmers grow crops without adding unnecessary quantities of fertiliser to the soil. A nice connection to our sustainability theme!

Making connections is a vital role for museums. These include connections between objects and ideas; connections between disparate objects; connections between objects and images; and, most importantly, connections between objects, ideas and people. I hope my chemistry-themed blog posts for the International Year of Chemistry have made some interesting connections for you.

Turning on the Canon Canola 1614P

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A couple of weeks ago the Museum received a request from Peter Miller for access to a collection object.  Now this type of access is not always granted as it is resource intensive – an object needs to be moved to a suitable location for viewing and a curator or conservator may need to be on hand to move the object – remember this material is kept by the Museum for the people of NSW in perpetuity and so we want it to last.

However if a genuine benefit to the Museum in the form of new research and information about the object is an outcome then we see this type of request as beneficial.  Now this chap wanted to inspect a Canon Canola 1614P, a desk top programmable calculator and not only that he wanted to turn it on.  Why?  Because Peter was writing (for computer) an emulator and turning it on would help Peter “establish how certain operations worked, when they are not completely described in the operator’s manual.”

 

I thought this was a great endevour as an emulator of the Canon Canola would let everyone see how it worked without having the real thing and in some form preserve its character for others to enjoy.  We checked with conservation of course and bought it up to speed with electronics providing the variac which would introduce current slowly.  You can see the result of our efforts below and enjoy Peters vivid description of its operation and peculiarities.

Brian Schmidt wins the Nobel Prize

Published by Debbie Rudder 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

It’s an exciting time for astronomy in Australia, with the recent announcement that Professor Brian Schmidt is to receive the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics and the strong possibility that the nation could be selected next year as the site for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Both optical astronomy (Schmidt’s area of expertise) and radio astronomy (the domain of the SKA) have flourished here since World War 2. Australia is thoroughly embedded in the amazing international effort to observe, measure and understand the universe.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mt Stromlo Observatory, 1989.

While most of the Powerhouse Museum’s astronomy collection relates to the history of our own Sydney Observatory, we have a few items used at Mt Stromlo, where Schmidt carried out his prize-winning observations. Professor Ben Gascoigne built this polarimeter at Mt Stromlo in 1963 to detect magnetic fields in distant dust clouds. The instrument, currently on display at Sydney Observatory, was designed to be bolted onto a telescope, gather the light scattered by dust particles, and detect the alignment of particles that indicates the presence of a magnetic field.

Now Brian Schmidt was born and studied in the USA but carried out key work in Australia. The aura of winning a Nobel Prize is such that we are happy to claim him as one of ours, while also making the same claim about Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, who was born and studied here but migrated to the USA, where she did the work that won her the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Both Schmidt and Blackburn hold dual citizenship, so they can be claimed legitimately by both nations. Importantly, these scientists can be seen as valuable role models for the youth of both countries, which is why the Museum is interested in telling their stories – as well as the stories of less stellar scientists such as the talented Ben Gascoigne, whose other claim to fame was as the husband of artist Rosalie Gascoigne (both of whom were born in New Zealand but chose to live in Australia).

History week: science delivers our daily bread

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Powerhouse Museum Collection.

It’s International Year of Chemistry and History Week, which this year has food as its theme: a perfect time to meet Frederick Bickel Guthrie, the chemist on this medal. Guthrie worked with a better-known Australian scientist, William Farrer, to develop strains of wheat that were resistant to both drought and rust, a fungus that damages grain and reduces yields. Rust is causing problems in the wheat industry again today.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This sample of rusted wheat was collected in 1890. Farrer’s Federation wheat variety helped the wheat industry revive in the following decade. This is why he featured on our first $2 banknote alongside drawings of wheat stalks.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Farrer systematically crossed wheat varieties and selected for desirable qualities, but he only grew small plots of each type. In a world-leading research program, Guthrie made a miniature roller mill to produce flour from the small quantities of grain that Farrer produced. He carefully analysed the flour’s gluten, bran and pollard content, noted its strength and colour, baked tiny loaves of bread from it, and advised Farrer which varieties were most nutritious and gave the best quality bread.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Here are the wheat stalks that artist Gordon Andrews used as models for his banknote drawing. They are in very good condition, stored in our archives along with his sketches. The fact that wheat can be stored for long periods helps make it a valuable commodity and a staple crop in many countries.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Wheat also featured from 1938 to 1966 on our pre-decimal currency, on the threepence coin. Like the $2 note, it is a testament to the value of this crop to our daily lives and national economy.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Guthrie popped up again when I decided to research the use of instruments like this chondrometer, made by Henry Simon in England. Despite the fancy name, it’s simply a device for measuring a small volume of grain (in the conical vessel) and weighing it by hanging the little bucket from the steelyard, whose base screws into a hole in the top surface of the box: a neat, portable unit for checking the density of a sample taken from a wheat crop. Density is a guide to wheat quality and determines the space required to store and transport the crop.

I was surprised to discover that this instrument is so crucial to wheat economics that in 1918 the NSW government set up a ‘chondrometer investigation committee’. I wondered if Guthrie was a member of this body – and one contemporary news item confirmed that he was. The committee considered the available chondrometers and approved a model that combined various features of those on the market.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Donated by Tooth and Company Ltd under the Australian Government's Tax Incentives for the Arts Scheme, 1986.

Back in the basement, I discovered a NSW standard chondrometer, with the name of Sydney maker AL Franklin faintly visible on the steelyard. This instrument complies with the main recommendation of the committee: to cover a smaller range of densities, from 32 to 75 pounds per bushel (compared to 13 to 70 on the Simon chondrometer and 0 to 80 on others) and thus give more precise measurements.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Our collection includes objects that represent every facet of the wheat industry and the everyday use of wheat products, from ploughs to harvesters, from a wheat wagon to grinding mills, from flour bags to toasters. This 1880s model shows all the processes that take place in an automated flour mill. I was intrigued by the final step: the ‘silk dressing machine’ above the bags. It turns out that silk is still the best material for dressing (sifting) flour. One more search was in order: do we happen to have any dressing silk in our collection? The answer is yes: two swatch books with silk of varying mesh sizes! The moire effect makes them a bit tricky to photograph, so here is a small sample of one of them.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of David Sheedy, 1991

Science Underground: limelight burner

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Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mr A W B Burns, 1972.

Chemists have not seen much of their discourse become part of popular culture, but the symbol for water is a notable exception. In advertising speak, H2O has a high recognition factor. It has been adopted and adapted for a plethora of cool brand names, a few geeky jokes and a successful Australian TV show and spin-off movie.

The symbol is a very neat way of summarising what we know about the composition of pure water. In each and every molecule of this ubiquitous substance, two hydrogen atoms are bound to one oxygen atom. Amazing stuff: we know from experiment that two invisible gases react to give this vital liquid; again from experiment, we know that two volumes of hydrogen react with one of oxygen; and we know, based on a wealth of careful experimentation and robustly debated theory, that this ratio is embodied in tiny invisible molecules made up of even smaller atoms.

What does this have to do with today’s Powerhouse Collection object, a limelight burner? Its two inlet pipes are designed to funnel hydrogen and oxygen gases towards the pointy end, where their reaction generates water and heat. The flame is directed towards the vertical spike, which is designed to hold a ball of quicklime (calcium oxide). Water reacts with quicklime, producing even more heat and a very bright light.

The use of limelight burners as theatre spotlights led to our saying ‘to be in the limelight’. This burner is one of many objects that will star in Science Underground, curator-led tours of our basement store during Ultimo Science Festival, a feast of activities on offer from 16-28 August 2011.

The Cryptograph

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Charles Wheatstone was interested in codes and ciphers and as part of his recreational activities amused himself by deciphering coded correspondence in the notices of daily newspapers usually sent between clandestine lovers or men concealing matters of business. It may have been the apparent ease of this practice that led Charles to develop “The Cryptograph”.

The Cryptograph uses one of the oldest and simplest forms of encryption – the Caesar cipher named after the roman leader Julius Caesar who used it to protect messages to his generals. The Caesar cipher is a type of substitution cipher which shifts the alphabet a fixed number of characters. However Wheatstone’s Cryptograph is more complex – as the long hand is rotated to each new character to be encrypted or deciphered, a gear to the shorter hand ensures a shift every rotation. This ingenious design circumvented the common method of deciphering the Caesar cipher by analysis of the distribution of alphabet characters (which is how Wheatstone would have decoded that lusty correspondence).

Pushing up daisies- a mortuary table

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Powerhouse Museum: Collection

This mortuary table was used in the mortuary at St Joseph’s Hospital, Auburn, in Sydney’s western suburbs in the 1940s and 1950s. It was used for both teaching and medical purposes. It was also used to prepare bodies for transport to funeral homes. The mortuary at St Joseph’s was little used after the 1950s, as post-mortems were being done in specialist centres by then. The mortuary was converted to a laundry in the 1990s and one of the graduate nurses of St Joseph’s, Lorna Higgs, rescued the table and it was installed as a potting table in her backyard at Yagoona. When she passed away, her daughter, Pauline Higgs, also a graduate nurse of St Joseph’s was renovating the house at Yagoona and asked if the donor would be interesting in taking the table. Ms Cosgrove did rescue the table; and is also a graduate nurse of St Joseph’s. Provenance has been kept from installation at St Joseph’s up until this time.

To save the table from damage, and to have the object’s importance recognised, Ms Cosgrove donated the mortuary table to the Powerhouse Museum in 2010.

The practice of post mortem, human dissection and embalming has been recorded as far back as 3,000 BC in Ancient Egypt. Autopsies and body preparation have been a part of nearly all cultures for religious, legal and educational purposes. Some cultures are resistant to the practice of post mortem as they believe it is disrespectful and impinges on funerary rites.

Mortuary practice is an important part of human culture. It is the final aspect of medical, pathological and cosmetic activity performed on the human body. The table is an essential component of the mortuary. Along with other mandatory aspects, such as cooled body storage, appropriate instruments (of which the Powerhouse Museum has some excellent examples), good lighting, adequate ventilation and personal protective equipment, the mortuary table must be maintained to the highest standard of repair and cleanliness. This model is made from porcelain – an easily decontaminated material – and is designed to allow liquid material to drain easily away.

The table’s manufacture and design are coldly utilitarian, and yet have a soft aesthetic. The drainage channels and large sink leave little to the imagination; however, the porcelain that allows extreme ease of cleaning of body fluids and matter is also an attractive piece of craftsmanship. This is why the mortuary table has survived five decades: people who had worked with the table saw its beauty and value and saved it. The table began life as a part of human dissection apparatus, but went on to be a potting table in a suburban backyard. It fulfilled both roles superbly.

Science Underground – Angelo Tornaghi: instrument maker and entrepreneur

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Angelo Tornaghi, Australian Men of Mark, 1889

Angelo Tornaghi arrived in Sydney in 1855 and for the next fifty years played a highly visible role in Sydney’s scientific community. By May 1864, he was running a highly respected business importing and making scientific instruments from his shop at 312 George Street. Just two months later his instruments were praised by the Royal Society of New South Wales as being equal to those of European manufacture. His standing as an instrument maker was also enhanced by a number of new designs, including an accurate and light circumferentor for quick surveying in the field.

Things should have gone smoothly, but it appears that the highly competitive and speculative nature of post gold-rush Sydney encouraged Tornaghi to take risks. By August 1866 his business had been crippled by a massive debt of around 5000 pounds and as a result he was forced to sell all his stock. This included clocks, watches, jewellery, electroplated ware, regulators, counters, glass cases and astronomical, mathematical, optical and surveying instruments.

To overcome his immediate difficulties, it seems Tornaghi decided to focus on doing contract work alongside a new business making paving tiles. It was from this period on that his name becomes associated with the installing and maintenance of some of New South Wales’ more important clocks.

In November 1867 he completed the installation of the Morpeth Town Clock in the local court house and in 1874 the new Sydney GPO opened with three large wall clocks whose components were all made in Tornaghi’s workshop.

In 1878 he was elected as alderman for Hunters Hill and in the following year he was elected Mayor. By the time Tornaghi died in 1906, he was not only a well-respected figure in Sydney, but had been acknowledged by his country of birth, who awarded him the Cross of Italy in recognition of his services to the Italian community in Sydney.

Science Underground – … the most powerful and perfect spectroscope of its time

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Spectroscope Powerhouse Museum H9957

Spectroscope, made by Adam Hilger, 1876, Powerhouse Museum, H9974

This spectroscope was made by the Adam Hilger of 192 Tottenham Court Road, London. It is also one of the earliest spectroscopes Hilger made as Henry Chamberlin Russell, Government Astronomer at the Sydney Observatory, ordered it in 1875; the same year Hilger opened his business.

After being tested it arrived in Sydney in 1876 and Russell appears to have been very happy with the workmanship. In his 1876 Government Report he described it as being the “most powerful and perfect one in the world at the time of its manufacture”. It was certainly well used as Russell connected it to the Observatory’s Merz 7.25-inch telescope to make spectral measurements. In 1878 it was also taken to the Blue Mountains to enable Russell to conduct tests to find out whether the performance of the observatory’s astronomical equipment was improved in the mountain air.

The spectroscope is an instrument which is attached to a telescope to spread light from the lens into lines of spectral wavelengths. This light is passed through a slit, and collimator, and then through a prism, or prisms, to disperse it into different wavelengths.

In 1859 Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff worked out how to measure the spectrums cast by the spectroscope and began using it to identify the chemical constitution of substances in the atmosphere. Initially experiments focussed on the earth’s atmosphere but by 1860 a number of astronomers had begun to pioneer the use of spectroscopes for measuring the chemical composition of bodies in space.

One of the most significant events occurred in 1864 when William Huggins and W. A. Miller published their paper on stellar spectra. This identified elements from stars which were the same as those on earth and made it clear other planets, like the sun, had atmospheres as well.

References
Todd, David, P., Stars and Telescopes, Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1900
Chaldecott, J., ‘Printed Ephemera of Some Nineteenth Century Instrument Makers’, in Blondel, C., Parot, F., Turner, A., Williams, M., (eds), Studies in the History of Scientific Instruments, Rogers Turner Books, London, 1989
McConnell, A., Instrument Makers to the World; a History of Cooke, Troughton and Simms, William Sessions, York, England, 1992
Knight, E., H., (ed), ‘Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary’, Vol III, J.B. Ford and Company, New York, 1874, p.2259
King, H., C., The History of the Telescope, Dover Publications, New York, 1955