Stammer Colorimeter
name: label: maker
content: Franz Schmidt & Haensch
notes: label: Description
content: Karl Stammer, a manager of a German factory that processed beet sugar, published an account of a colorimeter for grading sugar juices in 1874. The accompanying illustration shows an example made by Franz Schmidt & Haensch, an instrument house in Berlin that had been established in 1864 and that is still in business today.
label: Description
content: Stammer colorimeters were imported into the United States as early as 1896. In its 1926 ad for Stammer colorimeters, the Fisher Scientific Co. in Pittsburgh noted that they cost $190 and could be used with such substances as sugar solutions, oils, shellacs, varnishes, paints, and filter press runnings.
label: Description
content: The Stammer colorimeter has two parallel tubes, one holding a disc of a standard color and the other holding the sample to be analyzed. Light reflected from a milk glass plate at the base passes up through the tubes, and is refracted by a set of prisms and viewed through an eyepiece. There is a plunger in the sample tube that can be moved up and down, and an identical one in the standard tube that cannot.
label: Description
content: An inscription on this example reads "Franz Schmidt & Haensch / Werkstätten für Wissenschaftliche Instrumente / BERLIN S. 42." A few design elements, such as the shape of the housing for the prisms, suggest that it was made in the 1920s.
label: Description
content: Ref: Fisher Scientific Co., <Catalog> (Pittsburgh, 1926), p. 243.
label: Description
content: K. Stammer, <i>Lehrbuch der Zuckerfabrikation</i> (Braunschweig, 1874), p. 602.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Berlin, Berlin
topic: label: Subject
content: Optics
label: Subject
content: Color
label: Subject
content: Sugar
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
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content: Saccharimeters
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content: Measuring & Mapping
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.335519
label: catalog number
content: 335519
label: accession number
content: 321714
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Colorimeter
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: iron (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: nickel silver (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: case: 56.5 cm x 16.2 cm x 14 cm; 22 1/4 in x 6 3/8 in x 5 1/2 in
label: Measurements
content: cylinder: 305 mm x 32 mm; 12 in x 1 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: instrument: 52 cm x 13.3 cm; 20 1/2 in x 5 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: overall in case: 22 3/8 in x 5 1/2 in x 6 3/8 in; 56.8325 cm x 13.97 cm x 16.1925 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: case fragment: 3/16 in x 5 1/16 in x 2 13/16 in; .47625 cm x 12.85875 cm x 7.14375 cm