Accession No

4463

Brief Description

box of two prisms

Origin

Maker

Class

optical

Earliest Date

Latest Date

Inscription Date

Material

glass; wood; metal (silver)

Dimensions

prism length 115mm; height 70mm box length 447mm; breadth 174mm; height 140mm

Special Collection

Provenance

Transferred from the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.

Inscription

‘? Huggins
Refigured Hilgens’ (one prism)
‘Huggins Spectros
half prism
chips’ (other prism)

Description Notes

Two 90˚ prisms, with one silvered side and the others ground, in a fitted wooden box.

Condition fair (one prism has chipped corners and scratches on silvered surface); complete.

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:43426