Saccharimeter
name: label: maker
content: Franz Schmidt & Haensch
notes: label: Description
content: Soleil-Scheibler saccharimeter marked "Franz Schmidt & Haensch BERLIN Newe Schönhauser Str No. 882." The address indicates a date between 1869 and 1877.
label: Description
content: Jean Baptiste François Soleil, an optical instrument maker in Paris, described the saccharimeter in 1845. Carl Scheibler, director of the research institute of the Association of the German Beet Sugar Industry, modified Soleil’s design in 1869. He added a second tube for reading the scale, and a rod with wheel and pinion for rotating the polarizer.
label: Description
content: Scheibler also replaced the arbitrary scale used on French instruments with the scale devised by the German sugar chemist, Carl Ventzke. Each degree of the Ventzke scale is one-hundredth part of the rotation produced in the plane of polarization of white light in a column 200 millimeters long, by a solution of pure sucrose at 17.5 degrees C.
label: Description
content: In this example, the scale is ivory, linear, graduated every degree from -30 to 0 to +100, and read by vernier to .5 degrees. Also present are two glass observation tubes suitable for carrying 100 and 200 mm of liquid, a brass cylinder 200 mm long, and a wooden box. The base is missing.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Berlin, Berlin
topic: label: Subject
content: Optics
label: Subject
content: Sugar
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Saccharimeters
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content: Measuring & Mapping
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.328767
label: catalog number
content: 328767
label: accession number
content: 308252
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Saccharimeter
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 21 1/2 in x 6 1/4 in x 4 in; 54.61 cm x 15.875 cm x 10.16 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall in case: 4 1/8 in x 21 1/2 in x 6 1/4 in; 10.4775 cm x 54.61 cm x 15.875 cm