This simple device, also known as a chondrometer, consists of a steelyard, pedestal, and bucket. In operation, the bucket would be filled with grain, and the weight per bushel read on the scale. The form came into use in Europe in the early nineteenth century, as dealers began selling grain by weight rather than by volume. The beam of this example is marked “Corcoran & Co., London” while the slide is marked “Lbs per Bushel” and “799.”
Bryan Corcoran was a millstone builder, millwright, and instrument maker in London by 1780. His firm became Bryan Corcoran & Co. in the 1830s. Bryan Corcoran, Jr., showed a chondrometer, or Corn Balance, at the Royal Agricultural Society of England exhibition of 1879.
Ref: R. Peters, “Improved Pocket Chondrometer,” Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture 4 (1818): 313-314.
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