Wave Demonstration Device
date: label: date made
content: after 1867
name: label: maker
content: E. S. Ritchie & Sons
notes: label: Description
content: This wave demonstration device came from the University of Georgia. The inscription on a brass plate reads “E. S. Ritchie & Sons, Boston.” Ritchie trade literature termed it “Snell’s Improved Powell’s Wave Instrument for Showing the Undulations of Light in Plane, Elliptical, and Circular Polarization.”
label: Description
content: Baden Powell (1796-1860), the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, mentioned that he had devised a machine that shows “all kinds of elliptic vibrations, from circular to rectilinear, by a simpler mechanism.” “Such a machine,” he went on to say in his 1841 book, <i>A General and Elementary View of the Undulatory Theory</i>, “was deposited in the Gallery of Practical Science, Adelaide Street, and similar ones are made by Mr. E. M. Clarke of the Strand.” Ebenezer Strong Snell (1801-1876), a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College, designed and modified several pieces of demonstration apparatus.
label: Description
content: Ref: E. S. Snell, “Account of some new Articles of Philosophical Apparatus,” <i>American Journal of Science</i> 29 (1845): 21-27.
label: Description
content: E. S. Ritchie & Co., <i>Illustrated Catalogue of Philosophical Instruments, and School Apparatus</i> (Boston, 1860), p. 26.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Boston
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: The University of Georgia
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.326305
label: catalog number
content: 326305
label: accession number
content: 258980
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Wave Demonstration Apparatus