microscope
date: label: date made
content: 1938
name: label: maker
content: Bausch
label: maker
content: Bausch & Lomb
notes: label: Description
content: Fritz Maytag III received this microscope from his father when he was a teenager. With it, Maytag discovered a passion for what he called “alchemy,” and eventually, brewing beer. Maytag used this microscope to understand and correct inconsistencies in the beer at Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California.
label: Description
content: Born in 1937, Maytag grew up in Iowa, where his father ran the Maytag Washing Machine Company. Later, he moved to northern California to attend college and graduate school at Stanford University. In 1965, restless and yearning for new direction, Maytag jumped at the chance to purchase San Francisco’s historic but struggling Steam Beer Brewing Company (later, Anchor Brewing Company).
label: Description
content: With his entrepreneurial roots and zeal for science, Maytag revitalized the brewery. He perfected the brewery’s recipe for steam beer, an effervescent style that had originated in nineteenth-century San Francisco, and brewed European styles—porter, barleywine, pale ale—then unfamiliar to many Americans.
label: Description
content: As a self-taught brewer and savvy entrepreneur, Maytag inspired many who dreamed of opening their own small breweries. Historians consider Anchor Brewing Company to have been the first post-Prohibition microbrewery. Microbreweries, brewpubs, and “craft” breweries proliferated throughout the nation in the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond.
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Rochester
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Food Technology
label: Exhibition
content: Food: Transforming the American Table
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Fritz Maytag
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2017.0258.02
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0258.02
label: accession number
content: 2017.0258
objectType: label: Object Name
content: microscope
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: black; silver (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: fabric; glass; metal; wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal; wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: microscope: 12 1/4 in x 4 9/16 in x 7 1/2 in; 31.115 cm x 11.6205 cm x 19.05 cm
label: Measurements
content: carrying case: 14 9/16 in x 8 1/4 in x 9 5/16 in; 37.0205 cm x 20.955 cm x 23.6855 cm