Ultracentrifuge
name: label: maker
content: Spinco
notes: label: Description
content: Theodor Svedberg was a Swedish chemist who developed the first ultracentrifuge in the early years of the twentieth century, and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1926. Jesse Wakefield Beams, an optical physicist at the University of Virginia, developed an ultracentrifuge with rapidly rotating mirrors in the 1930s. His student, Edward Greydon Pickels, took the design a step further and, in 1946, co-founded Spinco (Specialized Instruments Corp.). Beckman Instruments bought Spinco in 1954. An inscription on this example reads "Serial No. 4 / SPINCO / Specialized Instruments / Corp / Belmont Calif."
label: Description
content: Max Lauffer (1914-2012), a young biochemist working at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, acquired this ultracentrifuge in the late 1940s, and took it along when he moved to the University of Pittsburgh, to start a Virus Research Institute with Jonas Salk. He later gave it to his student, Ramsey Frist, when Frist joined the faculty at West Virginia University.
label: Description
content: Ref: Boelie Elzen, “Centrifuge, Ultra-,” in Robert Bud and Deborah Warner, eds., <i>Instruments of Science</i> (New York and London, 1998), pp. 95-97.
label: Description
content: Beolie Elzen, “Two Centrifuges: A Comparative Study of the Social Construction of Artefacts,” <i>Social Studies of Science</i> 16 (1986): 621-662.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Biological Sciences
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: West Virginia University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1991.0797.01.1
label: catalog number
content: 1991.0797.01.1
label: accession number
content: 1991.0797
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Ultracentrifuge
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: average spatial: 155 cm x 188 cm x 69 cm; 61 in x 74 in x 27 3/16 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 68 in x 39 in x 82 in; 172.72 cm x 99.06 cm x 208.28 cm