Earth Inductor
notes: label: Description
content: Instrument dealers often described this type of instrument as a Palmieri apparatus, noting that it showed that the earth's magnetic field will induce a current in a rotating coil of wire. Luigi Palmieri was a physicist in Naples who, in the 1840s, developed an earth inductor with an elliptical ring that rotated around its longer axis. The Palmieri apparatus with a circular ring seems to have originated in the 1860s. This example belonged to Princeton University and may date from the 1870s, when Princeton established a School of Science. It came to the Smithsonian in 1961.
label: Description
content: Ref: E. Leybold, <i>Catalogue of Physical Apparatus</i> (Cologne, n.d.), item 6580.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
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: Princeton University
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.318589
label: accession number
content: 232728
label: catalog number
content: 318589
objectType: label: Object Name
content: earth inductor
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 10 in; 25.4 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 1/2 in x 13 3/4 in x 7 in; 29.21 cm x 34.925 cm x 17.78 cm