Spectrograph
date: label: date made
content: 1937
name: label: maker
content: Baird Associates
notes: label: Description
content: Baird Associates was established in Cambridge, Mass., in July 1936. The founding partners were Walter Baird, John Sterner, and Harry Kelly. In 1956, following a merger with Atomic Instrument Co., the firm became Baird Atomic. It later became the Baird Corporation, with headquarters in Bedford, Mass.
label: Description
content: Baird Associates’ first important instrument—fondly known as “Specky”—was was a three-meter grating spectrograph suitable for spectrochemical analysis. It was unveiled at the M.I.T. spectroscopy conference in 1937, and sold to New England Spectrochemical in 1940. Baird Atomic bought it back in 1976, and donated it to the Smithsonian in 1978. This is that instrument. The inscription on the door reads “BAIRD ASSOCIATES / CAMBRIDGE MASS.”
label: Description
content: The diffraction grating for this spectrograph is marked “3M 15000 Lines/inch Ruled by R. W. Wood and W. H. Perry At Johns Hopkins Univ. 3/31/1937.”
label: Description
content: Ref: David F. Walsh, “The History of Baird Corporation: A Broad Perspective on the Progress of Industrial Spectroscopy,” <i>Applied Spectroscopy</i> 42 (1988): 1336-1350.
label: Description
content: Davis Baird, “Baird Associates’s Commercial Three-Meter Grating Spectrograph and the Transformation of Analytical Chemistry,” <i>Rittenhouse</i> 5 (May 1991): 65-80.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Cambridge
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Baird Corporation
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1979.0025.01.01
label: accession number
content: 1979.0025
label: catalog number
content: 1979.0025.01.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: spectrograph, atomic
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 56 cm x 61 cm x 343 cm; 22 1/16 in x 24 1/32 in x 135 1/32 in
label: Measurements
content: skid: 30 in x 144 in; 76.2 cm x 365.76 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: atomic spectrograph: 22 1/8 in x 133 1/2 in x 23 5/8 in; 56.1975 cm x 339.09 cm x 60.0075 cm