Balance
date: label: date purchased for the Cohen lab
content: about 1969
label: date made
content: around 1958
name: label: maker
content: Mettler
notes: label: Description
content: A calibration balance has one pan on which the sample is placed, and a calibrated weight set. In use, the operator turns the dial, lifting the weights until the optical scale indicates equilibrium. The first commercially successful balance of this sort was introduced in 1947 by Erhard Mettler (1917-2000), a Swiss engineer who had established a precision mechanics company two years earlier. To better service American customers, the Mettler Instrument Corp. was established in Hightstown, N.J., in 1954.
label: Description
content: This example has an aluminum beam and base plate, a plastic case with a gray and green top, a light green body, and sliding glass doors on the weighing compartment. The inscription on the front reads “Mettler.” A tag behind the pan reads “Service / Plus / by / Mettler.” The color of the case and the rounded form of the edges suggest that this is an early model. It came from the Stanford University Medical Center, and may have been purchased in 1959, when that facility was opened in Palo Alto.
label: Description
content: This balance was used in the laboratory directed by Stanley Norman Cohen (b. 1935), a biochemist who joined the Stanford faculty in 1968. In 1973, Cohen and Herbert Boyer, then a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, conducted the first successful fully recombinant DNA experiment by transplanting genes from one living organism to another.
label: Description
content: Ref: Mettler Instrument Corporation ads in <i>Analytical Chemistry</i> 26 (July 1954): 26A; and in <i>Science</i> N.S. 136 (1962): 88, and N.S. 162 (1968): 29.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Switzerland: Zürich, Küsnacht
label: associated place
content: United States: California, Stanford
topic: label: Subject
content: Weights & Measures
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Stanley N. Cohen, MD and Stanford University Medical Center
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1987.0757.02
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0757.02
label: accession number
content: 1987.0757
label: serial number
content: 172706
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Balance
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: glass (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal, aluminum (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: green (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: gray (overall color)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 37 cm x 35 cm x 18 cm; 14 9/16 in x 13 25/32 in x 7 3/32 in