Brass thermoelectric pile
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Building on the recent work of other scientists, Leopoldo Nobili and Macedonio Melloni presented a thermopile to the Académie des Sciences in Paris in September 1831. Almost immediately, other scientists were obtaining instruments of this sort, and using them to record changes in temperature. This example came from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. And, although it is unsigned and undated, we suspect it was made by Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff, a German instrument maker who opened his own workshop in Paris in 1839, and who made thermoelectric apparatus according to Melloni’s designs. We also suspect that it was purchased by William H. C. Bartlett, the professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy who was in Europe in 1840, inspecting astronomical observatories in preparation for building one at West Point. We have not found the bill of sale. But we do know that Bartlett informed Joseph Henry, then a professor at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), “that these articles can be procured best and cheapest of a private workman named Ruhmkorff.”
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Electricity
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: from the United States Military Academy, thru Col. E. C. Gillette, Jr.
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: EM.315736
label: catalog number
content: 315736
label: accession number
content: 217544
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Thermo-Electric Pile
label: Object Name
content: thermopile
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 3/4 in x 3 1/4 in x 4 3/4 in; 12.065 cm x 8.255 cm x 12.065 cm