Hoskins Electric Dental Furnace
date: label: date made
content: ca1908
label: date made
content: ca. 1908
name: label: maker
content: Hoskins Manufacturing Company
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Electric furnace, 110 volts, with chromel-alumel heating element. Patented Feb. 6, 1906, July 9, 1907, July 30, 1907. "Developed by Albert L. Marsh in 1906, out of research aimed to develop a substitute for the expensive platinum thermocouple alloys then in use. Chromel is a nickle-chromium alloy and alumel is an alloy of nickel and aluminum. The use of the high-resistance chromel as a heating element was patented in 1906. March established the Hoskins Manufacturing Company for its manufacture in August 1908; [the company] moved to Detroit in 1909."
label: Description
content: A metal tag on this item reads "HOSKINS ELECTRIC DENTAL FURNACE, Pat. Feb. 6, 1906, July 9, 1907, July 30, 1907, 110 volts, 2½ amps., Manufactured by the Hoskins Co., Chicago."
label: Description
content: William Hoskins (1862-1934) was an entrepreneurial inventor who established the Hoskins Company in Chicago in the early years of the twentieth century. The firm moved to Detroit in 1908, and later became Hoskins Manufacturing. Albert Leroy Marsh (1877-1944) was a metallurgist who, while working for Hoskins, developed a relatively inexpensive alloy suitable for making high-resistance wire that could be used in electric furnaces. In 1914, this alloy would be termed Chromel.
label: Description
content: Ref: Ad for “The Hoskins Dental Furnace” in <i>Dental Practice</i> 3 (1907): xi.
label: Description
content: Albert L. Marsh, “Electric Resistance Unit,” U.S. Patent 811,159 (Feb. 6, 1906), assigned to the Hoskins Co.
label: Description
content: Albert L. Marsh, “Electric Resistance Element,” U. S. Patent 859,608 (July 9, 1907), assigned to the Hoskins Co.
label: Description
content: Albert L. Marsh, “Electric Muffle-Furnace,” U.S. Patent 861,744 (July 30, 1907), assigned to the Hoskins Co.
label: Description
content: “Albert L. Marsh,” <i>New York Times</i> (Sept. 19, 1944), p. 21.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Hoskins Manufacturing Company, through Mr. Leslie S. Morrison, Secretary and Treasurer
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MG.M-09398
label: catalog number
content: M-09398
label: accession number
content: 225115
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Electric Furnace
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 1/4 in x 5 1/2 in x 4 in; 15.875 cm x 13.97 cm x 10.16 cm