Polytrope
name: label: maker
content: Hardy, E.
notes: label: Description
content: Leon Foucault (1819-1868) was an experimental physicist in Paris who introduced the gyroscope in 1852. Building on this work, Georges Etienne Sire (1826-1906) designed a polytrope to demonstrate the effect of the earth's rotations on the movement of a rotating body such as a gyroscope, and presented an example to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1859. This example has lost its rotating body. The “E. Hardy A Paris” inscription refers to a Frenchman who showed a polytrope at the London Exposition of 1862. Hardy also made chronographs, gyroscopes, Foucault pendulums, and telegraph apparatus.
label: Description
content: Ref: Georges E. Sire, <i>Memoire sur un polytrope et quelques autres appareils servant a l’etude des mouvements de rotation</i> (Besancon, 1862).
label: Description
content: E. Hardy, <i>Appareils de Precision</i> (Paris, 1871), pp. 4-5.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Paris
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1990.0539.44
label: accession number
content: 1990.0539
label: catalog number
content: 1990.0539.44
objectType: label: Object Name
content: gyroscope demonstration apparatus
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal, brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 21 3/8 in x 12 3/4 in x 8 3/4 in; 54.2925 cm x 32.385 cm x 22.225 cm