Rutherfurd Diffraction Grating
date: label: date made
content: 1877
name: label: maker
content: Rutherfurd, Lewis Morris
notes: label: Description
content: Lewis M. Rutherfurd (1816-1892) was an astronomer in New York City who began making diffraction gratings around 1871 and distributing them freely to astronomers and physicists in the United States and abroad. By 1875 he was producing gratings with 17,280 lines per inch. This example is a steel plate measuring 1.75 inches square overall, with the ruled area occupying the central 1 inch square. The plate is marked "Dec. 22, 1877" and a card in the box is marked "17,280 No. 1".
label: Description
content: This diffraction grating may once have belonged to George Frederick Barker (1835-1910), a physical scientist who taught at University of Pennsylvania, and who was an active member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and other scientific organizations. Barker may have inherited it from John Christopher Draper (1835-1885), a New York scientist who used a grating of this description to observe, or so he thought, the dark lines of oxygen in the solar spectrum.
label: Description
content: Ref. D. J. Warner, "Lewis M. Rutherfurd: Pioneer Astronomical Photographer and Spectroscopist," <i>Technology and Culture</i> 12 (1971): 190-216.
label: Description
content: Elihu Thomson, “George Frederick Barker, M.D., Sc.D., LL.D.,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 50 (1911): xiii-xxix.
label: Description
content: John Christopher Draper, “On the Presence of Dark Lines in the Solar Spectrum, which correspond closely to the lines of the Spectrum of Oxygen,” American Journal of Science 16 (1878): 256-265.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Science & Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Russell Munroe
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.314901
label: accession number
content: 212171
label: catalog number
content: 314901
objectType: label: Object Name
content: diffraction grating
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 7.4 cm x 6.1 cm x 2 cm; 2 29/32 in x 2 13/32 in x 25/32 in
label: Measurements
content: overall; in case: 3/4 in x 3 in x 2 7/16 in; 1.905 cm x 7.62 cm x 6.19125 cm