Balance
Balance
- Description
- This is a Robervahl balance in an incised wood box with a marble top, wood and glass lid, drawer with several weights inside, and two metal pans with arrows that point toward one another. A brass label on the lid reads “HENRY TROEMNER / MAKER / Philadelphia.”
- Troemner displayed four counter balances based on “Hoffman’s patent” at the American Pharmaceutical Association meeting in 1867. Although he did not identify Hoffman, Troemner did note that, as was the case with the “French or Béranger balance,” the working parts were in a box, below the pans. And, having but a single beam, there were fewer bearings and thus less friction. The form proved remarkably successful.
- Ref: “Exhibition at the Annual Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association,” American Journal of Pharmacy (Nov. 1867): 568-572.
- Henry Heil, Illustrated Catalogue and Price-List of Chemical Apparatus (St. Louis, 1903), p. 117.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- Balance, Box Prescription
- balance
- date made
- late nineteenth century
- maker
- Troemner
- place made
- United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
- Physical Description
- glass (overall material)
- marble (overall material)
- wood (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 7 1/4 in x 12 1/2 in x 6 5/16 in; 18.415 cm x 31.75 cm x 16.03375 cm
- ID Number
- 1978.0883.216
- accession number
- 1978.0883
- catalog number
- 1978.0883.216
- subject
- Weights & Measures
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Medicine
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.
If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.
