Accession No
4465
Brief Description
spectroscope apparatus, by Carl Zeiss, German, 19th Century
Origin
Germany; Jena
Maker
Carl Zeiss
Class
optical
Earliest Date
1850
Latest Date
1900
Inscription Date
Material
metal; brass; glass; wood; velvet
Dimensions
box 210mm l x 160mm w x 70mm h 2nd box length 208mm; breadth 170mm; height 74mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from the Department of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.
Inscription
‘ZEISS SPECTROSCOPE APP’ (box)
‘Quarz-Flourit-Achromat Carl Zeiss Jena’ (both lenses)
Description Notes
Wooden box with brass hinges and hook fasteners, lined with blue velvet. It contains two brass mounted lenses, two prisms, ten specimen cases of various sizes and an unidentified brass strip.
Condition - good but pieces missing.
References
Events
Description
Spectroscope
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:40361
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