Accession No

3108

Brief Description

prism train, by Adam Hilger, English, 1897

Origin

England; London; and Germany; Jena [?]

Maker

Adam Hilger

Class

optical

Earliest Date

1897

Latest Date

1897

Inscription Date

1897

Material

glass

Dimensions

length 89mm; breadth 75mm; depth 55mm

Special Collection

Provenance

Transferred from Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 12/1983. Presumably the four prisms of the modified spectrograph fitted to the 25´´ Newall telescope at Cambridge in 1899.

Inscription

see description notes

Description Notes

Four 56˚ glass prisms. A number of pencilled marks: ‘N˚ 1’, ‘N˚ 2’, ‘N˚ 3’, ‘N˚ 4’. No 1 also marked ‘Hilger / Oct.2 1897/BLOOMED 1946/C3’ and ‘I/Coll’. No 2 also marked ‘Hilger / Oct. 16 1897/ BLOOMED 1946 / A1’ and ‘II’ (?). No. 3 also marked ‘Hilger / Jena / BLOOMED 1946 / D4’ and ‘III/Coll’ (?). No 4 also marked ‘Hilger Jena / BLOOMED 1946’ and ‘TOP’.

Condition: fair.

References

Events

Description
Prism
A prism consists of a translucent piece of glass or crystal, usually triangular in cross section, which is used to separate light into a spectrum of its separate colours.

The instrument works because different wavelengths of light are refracted (bent) by different amounts as they enter and leave the prism; the shorter wavelengths (towards the blue end of the spectrum) are refracted by the greatest amount, and the longer wavelengths (towards the red end) are refracted the least. This spreads out normal white light, which is a mixture of all the different colours, into its constituent parts and produces the rainbow effect of a spectrum.

18/10/2002
Created by: Saffron Clackson on 18/10/2002

FM:43419