Colorimeter
name: label: maker
content: Bausch and Lomb Optical Company
notes: label: Description
content: Louis Jules Duboscq made a colorimeter for a professor of industrial chemistry at the Commercial College in Paris in 1854. Duboscq's was not the first colorimeter on the market but it was, he would later claim, the first that allowed for the simultaneous color comparison of two liquids. Duboscq described an improved version to the French Academy of Sciences in 1868.
label: Description
content: The Duboscq colorimeter became much more important after Duboscq's death in 1886 than it ever was during his lifetime, especially among biochemists who found that, in conjunction with suitable reagents, it offered an efficient and effective technique for identifying foreign substances in bodily fluids. Bausch & Lomb's first Duboscq colorimeter, introduced in 1920, followed the French optical design.
label: Description
content: The National Bureau of Standards transferred this example to the Smithsonian in 1965. A tag reads “BAUSCH & LOMB OPTICAL CO. / ROCHESTER, U.S.A.”
label: Description
content: Ref: D. J. Warner, "The Duboscq Colorimeter," <i>Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society</i> 88 (2006): 68-70.
label: Description
content: John T. Stock, "The Duboscq Colorimeter and its Inventor," <Journal of Chemical Education</i> 71 (1994): 967-970.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Rochester
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from Excess Property, National Bureau of Standards
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.326625
label: catalog number
content: 326625
label: accession number
content: 261654
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Optical Instrument
label: Object Name
content: colorimeter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 55.2 cm x 16 cm x 13.3 cm; 21 3/4 in x 6 5/16 in x 5 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 21 1/4 in x 7 1/2 in x 9 3/8 in; 53.975 cm x 19.05 cm x 23.8125 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: instrument: 20 5/16 in x 6 in x 5 5/16 in; 51.6255 cm x 15.24 cm x 13.5255 cm