Beaker
date: label: Date made
content: 19th century
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 appears to date from the mid-nineteenth century.
label: Description
content: Beakers were known by the fourteenth century and were used primarily for holding drinks. Some examples might have used for pharmaceutical or alchemical purposes at an early date, but the form clearly became scientific in the nineteenth century. John Joseph Griffin, a chemical supply dealer in Glasgow, advertised 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.” A spout on the rim meant that liquids could be poured without loss. Griffin went on to say 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.315225.1
label: accession number
content: 218474
label: catalog number
content: 315225.1
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Beaker
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 in x 4 1/2 in; 7.62 cm x 11.43 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 7/16 in x 3 5/16 in x 2 7/8 in; 11.27125 cm x 8.41375 cm x 7.3025 cm