This analytical balance stands on a mahogany box that, in turn, is enclosed in a mahogany case with glass front and back. The balance is brass; the bearings are steel and agate; the pans are copper. The weights are in the drawer.
The “Pollock Boston Patent” inscription on the ivory scale refers to Allan Pollock, a Bostonian who received a U.S. patent for a balance, scale and beams, in 1815. According to a brief notice in the American Journal of Science 6 (1823): 371, Pollock was one of several Americans "advantageously known to the public" as a "manufacturer of thermometers and of philosophical apparatus."
This came from the laboratory of Ira Remsen, the first professor of chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University. Its earlier history is unknown.
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