This is probably a “Wave Machine after Fessel and Plucker . . . with two adjustable wave troughs and two sets of pins with balls on the ends for demonstrating transverse, Circular and elliptic wave motion.” It came from the Case Institute of Technology. The “MAX KOHL, A.G. / Fabrik physicalischer Apparate / CHEMNITZ i. Sa.” brass tag on the wooden box suggests that it was made after 1908.
Friedrich Fessel (1821-ca. 1860), a craftsman in Cologne, devised a version of Wheatstone’s wave demonstration device. Julius Plucker (1801-1868), a mathematician and physicist in Bonn, published an account of Fessel’s instrument in 1849.
Ref: Julius Plucker, in Poggendorff Annalen 78 (1849): 421.
Max Kohl A.G, Education and Laboratory Furniture for Physics, Chemistry and Biology Class Rooms and Laboratories (Chemnitz, [1928]), p. 351.
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