Accession No
2957
Brief Description
spectrometer, 1900-1950 (c)
Origin
Maker
Class
optical
Earliest Date
1900
Latest Date
1950
Inscription Date
Material
metal (brass, cast iron); glass
Dimensions
length 475mm; breadth 180mm; height 235mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Purchased from Phillips, London, England; lot 67, 20/04/1983.
Inscription
Description Notes
Brass spectrometer. Slit, brass jaws, width adjusting screw missing on push-fit draw tube with clamp. Collimator on painted cast mount with counter weight, pivoting with stage about central column, clamp and tangent screws. Stage with 2 apertures to reveal scale divided 0-360˚ to 30’, by 2 verniers to 1’. Above stage is prism table with complex prism mount and clamp and mount and 2 prisms on brass mount. Tanle has grid engravings. Telescope mounted on stand separately from stage, rack and pinion focus moved by knurled knob, screw-fit eyepiece. Cast painted tripod stand incorporates clamp and tangent screws for stage motion. Stage can be clamped to move with scale.
References
Events
Description
In 1814 Joseph von Fraunhofer noticed that the sun’s spectrum, when dispersed by a glass prism, is crossed by hundreds of fine dark lines. These lines could be used to determine the chemical composition of the sun, stars and many other substances by spectral analysis. The first photograph of the spectrum of a star (Vega) was made by Henry Draper using a spectroscope in 1872.
There are various different forms of spectroscope, but all use a slit and collimator to make a parallel beam of light, a prism for dispersing different wavelengths and a telescope to observe the dispersed spectrum.
18/10/2002
Created by: Saffron Clackson on 18/10/2002
FM:44816
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