Tristimulus Integrator
name: label: maker
content: General Electric Company
notes: label: Description
content: The Tristimulus Integrator, introduced in 1949, was a mechanical analog computer that could “distinguish 100,000,000 colors—ten times as many as the human eye can see.” It was developed by Hugh R. Davidson, a research physicist working at the General Analine and Film Corporation of New York City, and engineered by Lewis W. Imm, founder of Librascope, Inc., in Burbank, California. It was used with the General Electric Spectrophotometer invented by Arthur C. Hardy, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, the two instruments could analyze colors mathematically, “so that if one color does not match another the difference can be defined unambiguously.” An aluminum tag on this example reads “GENERAL ELECTRIC TRISTIMULUS INTEGRATOR” and “N.P. 95107.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Note in <i>Science</i> 109 (March 18, 1949): 297.
label: Description
content: H. R. Davidson and L. W. Imm, “A Continuous, Automatic Tristimulus Integrator for Use with the Recording Spectrophotometer,” <i>Journal of the Optical Society of America</i> 39 (1949): 942-944.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Chemistry
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1981.0496.10
label: catalog number
content: 1981.496.10
label: accession number
content: 1981.0496
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Tristimulus Integrator
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: triangle: 181 mm x 181 mm x 4.6 mm; 7 1/8 in x 7 1/8 in x 3/16 in
label: Measurements
content: tag: 1 in x 2 in; 2.54 cm x 5.08 cm
label: Measurements
content: each gear: 15.5 cm; x 6 1/8 in
label: Measurements
content: line magnifier: 197 mm x 30 mm x 6.2 mm; 7 3/4 in x 1 3/16 in x 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: drum: 220 mm x 97 mm; x 8 11/16 in x 3 13/16 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 21 cm x 36.2 cm x 25.6 cm; 8 1/4 in x 14 1/4 in x 10 1/16 in