Chemical Furnace
date: label: date made
content: ca. 1800
notes: label: Description
content: While chemists and alchemists had been using furnaces for many years, portable furnaces became popular in the middle years of the eighteenth century. The most famous was associated with Joseph Black (1728-1799), professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow and then the University of Edinburgh. This furnace is a derivative of that sort. It came from Williams College, a school that was established in Williamstown, Mass., in the early 1790s, and that offered lectures on chemistry at an early date. It may date from the mid-1830s when Professor Albert Hopkins went to Europe, to purchase philosophical and chemical apparatus for Williams College.
label: Description
content: This is probably either Knight’s Universal Table Furnace, or the larger and more expensive Knight’s Improved Black’s Portable Furnace. It probably came from Richard and George Knight, makers of chemical apparatus and philosophical instruments, with a shop located in Foster-Lane, London.
label: Description
content: Ref: Joseph Black, <i>Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry</i> (Edinburgh, 1803). Lecture 3 is on apparatus.
label: Description
content: R. G. W. Anderson, “Joseph Black and His Chemical Furnace,” in R. G. W. Anderson, J. A. Bennett, and W. F. Ryan, eds., <i>Making Instruments Count: Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments</i> (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 118-126.
label: Description
content: “Description of . . . Geological and Mineralogical Instruments and Apparatus, Taken from the Catalogue of the Manufacturers R. & G. KNIGHT, Foster Lane, London,” in W. D. Conybeare and William Phillips, <i>Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales</i> (London, 1822), appendix.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Williams College
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.315224
label: catalog number
content: 315224
label: accession number
content: 216214
objectType: label: Object Name
content: chemical furnace
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: with stack: 56 in x 10 1/2 in; 142.24 cm x 26.67 cm