Hand mirror with celluloid back and glass face. The back is made to look like a black and white clock, with Roman numerals in the border. At center,"3-20-8" is written in white letters within a red bar. The clock arms read 3:28.
Advertising piece for A. B. Smitth & Co. "Now is the time to smoke," it reads, "New England's Best 10 cent cigar."
This mirror is made of stellite, a highly-reflective alloy of chromium, cobalt and tungsten that tends not to tarnish. Smithsonian scientists used it in conjunction with spectrobolometers, after having found that mirrors made of silvered glass or of speculum metal tended to tarnish. The mirror is octagonal (8 inches high x 5 inches wide) and held in a brass frame that can be adjusted for latitude; there are four round holes in the base. The stellite was furnished by the Haynes Stellite Co. in Kokomo, Indiana.
Ref: Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution 4 (1922): 86.
Round glass mirror, 7 inches (18 cm) diameter, one side plane and the other slightly concave. The wooden frame around the mirror is held in a brass yoke that, in turn, is supported on a wooden pedestal with a circular base. All the wood is painted black. The “de M. . .LU. . .Z Boulevard St Germain. . .” on the torn paper label on the pedestal refers to Édouard Lutz, a manufacturing optician who was in business in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century.
After the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, American leaders realized that the best optical instruments came from German shops. Thus, to obtain the spy glasses, binoculars, range finders, and other optical instruments needed by its fighting forces, they commandeered the resources of private optical and instrument shops. And they authorized the establishment of a new optical shop at the Washington Navy Yard. That facility, later termed the Naval Weapons Plant Optical Shop, gave this rectangular double-sided mirror to the Smithsonian in 1961.