Science & Mathematics - Overview
The Museum's collections hold thousands of objects related to chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, and other sciences. Instruments range from early American telescopes to lasers. Rare glassware and other artifacts from the laboratory of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, are among the scientific treasures here. A Gilbert chemistry set of about 1937 and other objects testify to the pleasures of amateur science. Artifacts also help illuminate the social and political history of biology and the roles of women and minorities in science.
The mathematics collection holds artifacts from slide rules and flash cards to code-breaking equipment. More than 1,000 models demonstrate some of the problems and principles of mathematics, and 80 abstract paintings by illustrator and cartoonist Crockett Johnson show his visual interpretations of mathematical theorems.
"Science & Mathematics - Overview" showing 32 items.
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Comptometer Model C, British Currency
- Description
- This model of an adding machine section has a single black key “1” key, with a complementary 0 digit, in the rightmost column. Left of this is a column of nine white keys. Keys for odd digit keys are concave, and those for even digits are flat. Three numeral wheels are at the front. The rightmost has alternate zeros and ones, and the two to the left both have the digits from 0 to 9. There is a handle on the right side. There is no case. The keys apparently could be used to add shillings (there being 20 to a pound).
- This object came to the Smithsonian from Victor Comptometer Corporation, the successor firm to Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company.
- References:
- Accession Journal 1991.3107.06.
- British Patent No. 5387 to Dorr E. Felt, applied for March 5, 1909, and granted June 6, 1910.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1909
- maker
- Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- MA*323652
- accession number
- 250163
- catalog number
- 323652
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Comptometer Model B, 1/20 Fraction
- Description
- This full-keyboard non-printing adding machine has a metal top and mechanism, eight columns of color-coded octagonal plastic keys with complementary digits indicated, and a zeroing crank on the right side. The second column of keys from the right has only one key in it. The keys are alternately concave (odd digits) and flat (even digits). Nine rows of number wheels in front of the keyboard indicate the result. The second number wheel from the right has only zeros and ones on it. The sides and base of the machine are missing. It is marked on a metal tag screwed to the top at the back: TRADE COMPTOMETER MARK. The last patent date on the tag is: AUG.9.04.
- This is a forerunner of the Model C Comptometer for British currency (MA*323652).
- Reference:
- Felt & Tarrant, Accession Journal 1991.3107.06.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1908
- maker
- Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- MA*323653
- catalog number
- 323653
- accession number
- 250163
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Comptometer Model C, British Currency Indexer
- Description
- This full-keyboard non-printing adding machine has a steel frame painted black, a steel mechanism, and eight columns of black and white plastic keys, with complementary digits indicated. The rightmost column has three black keys and indications of quarters from 1/4 to 3/4. The second column has eleven white keys. The third column has nine black keys. The fourth column from the right has one black key. The four left columns have nine keys each. The keys are alternately concave (odd digits) and flat (even digits). The machine is designed for calculations involving pounds, shillings, and pence.
- Thesubtraction levers are at the front of the columns of keys, decimal indicators in front of these, and nine windows covered with clear plastic that show the result. The wheel in the first position is divided to read eighths. A zeroing lever is on the right side. At the back of the machine is a metal attachment painted black that holds five paper-covered dials. Four of these dials are covered with metal shutters. The shutters are opened manually by pressing down on the key directly below the shutter. The shutter is then locked in position. A release lever on the left side closes the shutter. A knob on the left side manually rotates the dials. The entire instrument is designed to make it easier to multiply units of British currency. The machine has serial number 33077.
- A label received with the object indicates that the British Currency Indexer was made approximately in 1914.
- Reference:
- Felt & Tarrant, Accession Journal, 1991.3107.06.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1909
- maker
- Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- MA*323654
- maker number
- 33077
- catalog number
- 323654
- accession number
- 250163
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Odhner Arithmometer
- Description
- The family of W. T. Odhner continued to manufacture calculating machines in St. Petersburg from the time of Odhner’s death in 1905 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. This is a pinwheel calculating machine made in that period.
- The machine has a brass frame painted black with eight metal pinwheels and a wooden base. Numbers are set by rotating the pinwheels forward using levers that extend from the wheels. Digits inscribed on the frame next to the rotating pinwheels to show the number set. The machine has no separate set of windows to show these digits.
- The carriage at the front of the machine has eight windows for the revolution counter on the left and 13 windows for the result register on the right. A thin metal rod attached above the windows of the carriage carries two decimal markers. Wing nuts at opposite ends of the carriage zero these registers. To release the carriage, one pushes down a lever at the front. A crank with a wooden knob on the right side of the machine rotates clockwise for addition and multiplication and counterclockwise for subtraction and division.
- A mark on the top of the machine reads: Odhner’s [/] Arithmometer. Another mark there reads: No. 7368. A circular inscription on the left front reads: MASCHINENFABRIK (/) W.T. ODHNER (/) ST PETERSBURG
- According to the donor, his father, the civil engineer Fred C. Dunham of the state of Washington, purchased the machine in October 1907 from the German agent of Brurnsviga, who had taken over two Odhner machines from a Russian agent. The older Dunham added the bar for decimal markers. The machine proved highly reliable.
- References:
- Accession file.
- U.S. Census records.
- Henry Wassen, Odhner History, Gothenburg, Aktiebolaget Original-Odhner, 1951.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1907
- maker
- Maschinnenfabrik W. T. Odhner
- ID Number
- MA*328418
- accession number
- 272526
- catalog number
- 328418
- maker number
- 7368
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mack Improved Mannheim Simplex Slide Rule by Dietzgen
- Description
- This wooden ten-inch Mannheim slide rule is faced with white celluloid. The top edge is beveled and has a scale of inches divided to sixteenths of an inch. The bottom edge is flat and has a scale of centimeters divided to millimeters. The base has A and D scales, with B and C scales on one side of the slide and S, L, and T scales on the other side of the slide. The L scale is not lettered. The base underneath the slide is marked: EUGENE DIETZGEN CO. CHICAGO–NEW YORK (/) W. F. M. It is also marked: PAT. JUNE 28 1898. The indicator is glass in a metal frame. A paper glued to the back of the rule gives the properties of various substances and equivalents of various weights and measures. Carved into the back is: W.F.M. 1907.
- The base of the rule is cut lengthwise into two sections that are joined together by invisible springs. This was intended to create more uniform resistance to the motion of the rule (even if it is fully extended) and to make it possible to straighten the parts of the rule by scraping, should it become warped. A cardboard box covered with burgundy leather is marked: The Mack Improved Slide Rule (/) NO. 1765 (/) EUGENE DIETZGEN CO. (/) CHICAGO. NEW YORK.
- This rule is named for John Givan Davis Mack (1867–1924), an early member of the engineering faculty at the University of Wisconsin who taught from 1893 to 1915. On June 28, 1898, he received U.S. Patent 606388 for dividing the base of a slide rule and rejoining the pieces with springs. He assigned the patent to the Eugene Dietzgen Company of Chicago, which first sold a slide rule built on Mack's patent in 1898 and offered this version from 1902 to 1912 for $4.50.
- The carved initials are those of the owner, the spectroscopist William F. Meggers (1888–1966), who was long associated with the U.S. National Bureau of Standards. He received his B.A. in physics from Ripon College in 1910, his M.A. in physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1916, and his Ph.D. in physics, mathematics, and astronomy from Johns Hopkins University in 1917. It seems likely that he acquired this rule as a student. For a less precise slide rule associated with Meggers, see MA*293320.2820. For later slide rule instructions distributed by Dietzgen, see 1981.0933.07.
- References: Catalogue & Price List of Eugene Dietzgen Co., 7th ed. (Chicago, 1904), 171; Rodger Shepherd, "Some Distinctive Features of Dietzgen Slide Rules," Journal of the Oughtred Society 5, no. 2 (1996): 42–45; Peter M. Hopp, Slide Rules: Their History, Models, and Makers (Mendham, N.J.: Astragal Press, 1999), 159–160, 276; J. G. D. Mack Papers, University of Wisconsin Archives: U. S. Patent 606388.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1907
- maker
- Eugene Dietzgen Company
- ID Number
- MA*335270
- catalog number
- 335270
- accession number
- 314637
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
The Calcumeter
- Description
- This five-wheeled stylus-operated adding machine has wheels of German silver (for ones and tens) and brass (for higher decimal places), with a blackened brass frame and sliding brass decimal marker. Each wheel has ten indentations. These are labeled in red on the wheel from 0 to 9. One of these ten digits is visible at any time. The digits from 1 to 9 are also stamped on the top of the frame around the opening for each wheel. Using the digits on the frame to indicate the placement of the stylus and rotating, the sum appears in the red digits on the wheels. No stylus survives. Apparently the machine doesn’t subtract. Small levers attached to the back of the machine can be adjusted to prop it up.
- The machine is marked on the front: THE CALCUMETER. It is marked on the back: 911 (/) PAT’D DEC.17’01. It is also marked there: D.Draper (/) April 2nd 1904. It is marked on the end: MORSE&WALSH CO. (/) TRENTON, N.J.
- The Calcumeter was invented by James J. Walsh of Elizabeth, N.J., who received a patent for it December 17, 1901 (U.S. Patent 689,225). The Calcumeter was first manufactured by Morse & Walsh Company in 1903 and 1904, but by 1906 was produced by Herbert North Morse of Trenton. Daniel Draper, who owned this machine, was a meteorologist in New York City.
- Compare MA*323622.
- Reference:
- P. A. Kidwell, “Scientists and Calculating Machines,” Annals of the History of Computing, 12 (1990): pp. 31-40.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1904
- maker
- Morse & Walsh Company
- ID Number
- MA*335352
- accession number
- 304826
- catalog number
- 335352
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Magnetometer
- Description
- The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington designed this theodolite magnetometer around 1904, combining the best features of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey magnetometer and that used by the Magnetic Survey of India. This example is marked ";BAUSCH, LOMB, SAEGMULLER CO. Rochester, N.Y. 4594" and "C.I. MAGNETOMETER NO. 4." It was made in 1907 and, with tripod, cost $620.50.
Ref: J. A. Fleming, "Comparisons of Magnetic Observatory Standards by the Carnegie Institution of Washington," Terrestrial Magnetism 16 (1911): 61-84, on 62-63.
Bausch, Lomb, Saegmuller Co., Astronomical, Engineering and Other Instruments of Precision (Rochester, N.Y., 1907), pp. 41-43.
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Land Magnetic Observations, 1905-1910 (Washington, D.C., 1912).
- Date made
- 1907
- maker
- Bausch, Lomb, Saegmuller Co.
- ID Number
- PH*316516
- accession number
- 225703
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Arm Protractor and Goniometer Invented by Samuel L. Penfield
- Description
- It may seem obvious that surveyors, navigators, and mathematics students would need to measure angles. These practitioners are not the only audiences for protractors, however, since angle measurement is necessary in a variety of other fields. Geologists examine the faces and edges of crystals and recreate the crystals' structures by drawing stereographic projections. In 1900, Samuel Lewis Penfield (1856–1906), a geology professor at Yale University who earned his Ph.B. from Yale in 1877, patented two forms of "contact-goniometer." (A goniometer measures plane angles.) These instruments, along with a stereographic protractor and beam compasses that Penfield patented in 1901, helped establish the technique of stereographic projections in crystallography. Penfield aimed to simplify the work involved in the technique and to produce an inexpensive instrument.
- This semicircular paper protractor appears to be an example of the contact-goniometer awarded patent number 655,004 on July 31, 1900. It is printed on a white rectangular card. It is divided by half-angles and marked by tens in both directions (counterclockwise and clockwise) from 0° to 180°. A ruler, divided to millimeters and marked by ones from 0 cm to 14 cm, is printed along the top edge of the card. A diagonal scale and scales for dividing the inch into 10, 12, and 16 parts appear in the interior of the protractor. A celluloid arm is attached at the vertex of the protractor. Users were to set angles according to a horizontal line on the arm but then draw angles along the edge of the arm.
- The lower left corner of the card reads: ARM PROTRACTOR AND GONIOMETER (/) Designed by S. L. Penfield. A mark at the lower right corner of the scales of equal parts affirms that the protractor is: ENGINE DIVIDED. The protractor is contained in a paper envelope, which also holds a sheet of instructions written by Penfield. The envelope is imprinted: ARM PROTRACTOR AND GONIOMETER. It is also stamped: Cenco 88210.
- The Mineralogical Laboratory of Yale's Sheffield Scientific School offered early versions of this instrument. Central Scientific Company of Chicago (abbreviated Cenco) sold the Penfield arm protractor and goniometer in this form from as early as 1909 (as item 427) to as late as 1950 (as item 88210). In 1914, the instrument cost 67 cents. William C. Marshall (of Bridgeport Works and formerly at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale) listed it as a required tool in Elementary Machine Drawing and Design (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1912), 8. Edward Salisbury Dana discussed Penfield's instrument in more detail in A Textbook of Mineralogy, With an Extended Treatise on Crystallography and Physical Mineralogy, 3rd ed. rev. William E. Ford (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1922), 33–40.
- References: Samuel Lewis Penfield, "Contact-Goniometer" (U.S. Patent 655,004 filed April 2, 1900), "Contact-Goniometer" (U.S. Patent 655,005 filed April 2, 1900), "Stereographic Protractor" (U.S. Patent 667,570 filed October 25, 1900), and "Beam-Compass" (U.S. Patent 673,687 filed December 31, 1900); S. L. Penfield, "The Stereographical Projection and its Possibilities, from a Graphical Standpoint," American Journal of Science 4th ser. 11 (1901): 1–24, 115–144; Central Scientific Company, Physical and Chemical Apparatus Catalogue M (May, 1914), 42; L. V. Pirsson, "Samuel Lewis Penfield," American Journal of Science, 4th ser. 22 (1906): 353–367; Horace L. Wells, "Samuel Lewis Penfield, 1856–1906," in Biographical Memoirs (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1909), vi:119–146; Shellie Snell, "Central Scientific Company: A Brief History," Robert A. Paselk Scientific Instrument Museum, Humboldt State University, http://www.humboldt.edu/scimus/Manufac/Cenco/Cenco.htm.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1909-1950
- patent date
- 1900
- maker
- Central Scientific Company
- inventor
- Penfield, Samuel Lewis
- ID Number
- 1982.0147.02
- accession number
- 1982.0147
- catalog number
- 1982.0147.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Electroytpe of a "Carrying-basket in usual position"
- Description
- This electrotype of “Carrying-basket in usual position” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the image was published as Plate 15 (p.37) in an article by David I. Bushnell, Jr. (1875-1941) entitled “The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana” in the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 48, (1909).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1909
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Bushnell, Jr., David I.
- ID Number
- 2000.0207.089
- catalog number
- 2000.0207.089
- accession number
- 2000.0207
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Electrotype of "Toshkachito holds a Choctow blowgun in shooting position"
- Description
- This electrotype of “Toshkachito holds a Choctow blowgun in shooting position” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the image was published as Plate 20 (p.37) in an article by David I. Bushnell, Jr. (1875-1941) entitled “The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana” in Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 48, (1909).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1909
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Bushnell, Jr., David I.
- ID Number
- 2000.0207.091
- catalog number
- 2000.0207.091
- accession number
- 2000.0207
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center