Tintometer
name: label: maker
content: Tintometer, Ltd.
notes: label: Description
content: Joseph W. Lovibond (1833-1918) was a brewer in Salisbury, England, who sought a way to control beer quality by matching each batch to a color standard. In 1886, after some 20 years of experimentation, he obtained a British patent on a device that compared the color of a beer sample with the color made by a combination of two or three glass filters of various intensities of magenta, yellow, or cyan.
label: Description
content: Lovibond introduced his Tintometer to the market in 1887, describing it as a “new instrument for the analysis, synthesis, matching, and measurement of colour.” It soon found uses in numerous industries. Eimer & Amend in New York claimed in 1895 that it was “Invaluable to Chemists, Dyers, Brewers, Sugar Refineries and Flouring Mills.” Moreover, its “method of expressing the composition of any given color with mathematical precision” gave a “new power” to colorimetric investigation. Tintometer, Ltd., was established by Lovibond in 1896 and is still in business today.
label: Description
content: This example was used at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The inscription on the base reads “THE TINTOMETER LTD. SALISBURY ENG. RD. NO. 710856.” That on the viewer reads “THE TINTOMETER LTD, SALISBURY, ENG. B. 1587.”
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United Kingdom: England, New Sarum
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from U.S. Food and Drug Administration
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.330225
label: catalog number
content: 330225
label: accession number
content: 287963
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Tintometer
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: slide holder: 3.5 cm x 2.5 cm x 3.2 cm; 1 3/8 in x in x 1 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: each dish: 8 mm x 28 mm x 57 mm; 5/16 in x 1 1/8 in x 2 1/4 in
label: Measurements
content: overall closed: 7.7 cm x 8.3 cm x 47 cm; 3 1/16 in x 3 1/4 in x 18 1/2 in
label: Measurements
content: overall; tintometer: 3 in x 3 3/8 in x 18 1/8 in; 7.62 cm x 8.5725 cm x 46.0375 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall; box of parts: 2 in x 3 7/8 in x 2 7/8 in; 5.08 cm x 9.8425 cm x 7.3025 cm