Beaker
date: label: Date made
content: 19th century
label: Date made
content: 1800-1900 19th centur
label: Date made
content: 1800-1900
notes: label: Description
content: In chemical parlance, a beaker is a cylindrical vessel, usually of glass, with a flat bottom. This example has a small beak (or pouring spout), and might date from the mid-nineteenth century.
label: Description
content: Beakers were known by the fourteenth century and, while used primarily for drinking purposes, might sometimes have put to pharmaceutical or alchemical uses. John Joseph Griffin, a chemical supply dealer in Glasgow, began selling beakers from Bohemia in the late 1830s, explaining that German chemists use them “for holding a cold solution” and “for heating it in.” These beakers were made of thin and hard white glass that can withstand “considerable and very sudden changes of heat without cracking.” And because there was a pouring spout at the top, liquids could be poured without loss. Some advertisements noted that beaker glasses had been recommended by the Swedish chemist, Jőns Jacob Berzelius. And some argued that “When English glass makers can be persuaded to make vessels of this kind, or rather when the British government pleases to permit the manufacture of chemical vessels in Britain, they may become cheaper. The freight of these vessels from Bohemia, and the enormously high English custom house duties constitute a chief part of the price above-named.”
label: Description
content: Ref: John Joseph Griffin, Chemical Recreations (Glasgow, 1838).
label: Description
content: Ad for “Griffin’s Cheap Chemical Apparatus” in John W. Webster, A Manual of Chemistry (Boston, 1839).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Dr. Derek J. Price
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.315225.2
label: catalog number
content: 315225.2
label: accession number
content: 218474
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Beaker, Chemical
label: Object Name
content: Beaker
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/4 in x 5 in; 6.985 cm x 12.7 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 7/8 in x 3 3/16 in x 2 7/8 in; 12.3825 cm x 8.09625 cm x 7.3025 cm