Glass lantern slide depicting various galaxies. The rectangular wooden frame is incised “CARPENTER / & WESTLY / 24 REGENT ST. / LONDON” on front, and “29” on one edge.
Glass lantern slide depicting Jupiter with its four brightest moons. The rectangular wooden frame is incised “CARPENTER / & WESTLEY / 24 REGENT ST. / LONDON” on front, and “8” on one edge.
Right angle glass prism with a silvered, anti-reflection coating, made in the Optical Shop of the Naval Gun Factory, Washington, D.C., in 1944. The form was used in the Mark 46, Mark 47, Mark 61, and Mark 62 Navy gun directors during World War II. John C. Goff (1915-1996), the donor, attended the Apprentice School at the Naval Gun Factory in the 1930s, and worked in that Optical Shop during the War.
Ref: “JOHN C. GOFF / Electronics Engineer,” Washington Post (June 19, 1996), p. B7.
The Navisphere was designed to be "a nautical instrument of extremely simple construction and easily handled, by means of which nearly all the complex nautical problems may be solved in a few minutes, and without calculation, or, at least, with very little calculation." It consists of a celestial globe that shows only the brightest stars, with a brass superstructure (the Metrosphere) that represents the horizon and two meridians. Henri DeMagnac, a captain in the French navy who was interested in the problems of navigation, probably came up with the original design. Frederic William Eichens, an instrument maker in Paris, obtained a French patent for it in 1878, an American patent in 1881, and other patents in England and Germany. An inscription on This example reads "NAVISPHERE / DE / . . . / F. W. EICHENS CONSTR / E. BERTAUX, ÉDITEUR / PARIS."
Ref: F. W. Eichens, "Celestial Globe," U.S. patent #247,811.
H. De Magnac, "Le navisphere - instrument nautique," Revue Maritime et Coloniale 61 (1879): 598-616.
H. De Magnac, Le Navisphere: instrument nautique, instruction pour son usage (Paris, 1881); and The Navisphere (England, 1881).
This incomplete Borda-type reflecting circle belonged to Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and may have been acquired when that school was established in 1860. The inscription reads "J. & I. Hardy, London."
This is marked "J. C. SALA MAKER SAN FRANCISCO 825." Sala termed it an Engineer's Complete Transit, and priced it at $235. The horizontal circle is silvered, graduated into 64 units (each equal to 100 mils), and read by opposite verniers to 30 parts. One mil (or military degree) equals 3.375 arc minutes. A variation arc, outside the compass at E, extends 30 degrees either way; the vernier reads to single minutes. The vertical arc, also silvered, is graduated into 30 minutes of arc, and read by vernier to single minutes. There is a clamp and tangent attachment to the telescope axis, as well as a gradienter attachment for determining gradients, distances, and differences of level.
Joseph Charles Sala (1841-1916) was born in Italy, moved to San Francisco around 1861, and worked for John Roach. Following Roach's death in 1891, Sala went into business for himself, advertising as "Successor to John Roach" and noting his many awards from the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco.
Ref: J. C. Sala, Illustrated Catalogue and Manual of Civil Engineers' and Surveyors' Instruments (San Francisco, 1896).
Glass lantern slide depicting the aspects of a minor planet, with the Earth, Sun and fixed stars. The rectangular wooden frame is incised “CARPENTER / & WESTLEY / 24 REGENT ST. / LONDON” on front, and “15” on one edge.
Small round pocket compass that may have been made during World War II. The cover of the brass case is engraved "U.S." The face is marked "Waltham." David B. Lellinger (b. 1937), the donor, was a botanist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Henry Draper (1837-1882) was a New York physician, and pioneer of astronomical photography and spectroscopy. This is his research notebook XI, and it runs from June 27, 1872 to April 24, 1876. Tipped into the notebook are numerous photographs of astronomical spectra, peeled off of the original glass backings.
Ref: George F. Barker, “Memoir of Henry Draper,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1888), pp. 81-139.
This plastic champagne coupe has a paper decoration in the base that is inscribed with "105 | HILAC | Al Ghiorso * Matti Nurmia * Kari Eskola * Jim Harris * Pirkko Eskola | April 23, 1970." The cup was one of a set designed and decorated by nuclear scientist Albert Ghiorso (who loved to create doodles and art) for a party celebrating the discovery of element 105 at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, now known as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Albert (Al) Ghiorso was the head of the discovery team that included three Finnish physicists (Matti Nurmia, Kari Eskola, and Pirkko Eskola) and one Berkeley nuclear chemist (James (Jim) Harris).
Harris purified and prepared a californium-249 target that was placed in Berkeley's Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC) and bombarded with nitrogen-15 ions. Ghiorso, Nurmia, and Kari Eskola, were responsible for setting up, modifying, and running the equipment that detected newly formed particles created by smashing the nitrogen ions into the californium target at the end of the accelerator's beamline. Pirkko Eskola analyzed the energy and half-life data from the particle detectors which was processed and stored on a PDP-9 computer.
In a paper submitted to the Physical Review Letters on 17 April 1970, the team reported the discovery of an isotope of element 105 and suggested it be named hahnium, in honor of German chemist Otto Hahn. Their methods closely mirrored the team's previous discovery of element 104 in 1969, in which they used the same californium target but bombarded it with carbon-12 and carbon-13 ions.
Another research group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, USSR, also claimed priority to the discovery of elements 104 and 105. Decades of controversy ensued. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) ruled that the two teams should share credit for the discoveries and set the name for 104 as rutherfordium, as suggested by the Berkeley group, and 105 was named dubnium, for the Russian group.
Element 105 was the last element discovered with the HILAC at Berkeley, which was also used to create elements 102-104. It was later modified and upgraded to accelerate even heavier ions and became known as the Super HILAC (~1972), opening the doors to the creation of more superheavy elements. This upgrade was mirrored by the drink options at parties, Super HILAC punch was much stronger than the HILAC punch.
References:
Ghiorso A., Nurmia M., Harris J., Eskola K., and Eskola P., “Positive Identification of Two Alpha-Particle-Emitting Isotopes of Element 104,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 22, 1317 – Published 16 June 1969
Ghiorso A., Nurmia M., Eskola K., Harris J., and Eskola P., “New Element Hahnium, Atomic Number 105”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 24, 1498 (1970) - Published 29 June 1970
Personal communication (2019) with Matti Nurmia and Kari Eskola.
Small brass reflector mounted on a simple pillar that is attached to a wooden box. There is a short focusing rod and two open sights for sighting distant objects. The aperture is 2 inches, the tube is 9.5 inches long, and the focus is 7 inches. The “JAMES SHORT LONDON J744 37/405 = 7” inscription on the eye-plate indicates that this telescope was made in 1744, it has a 7-inch focus, it was Short’s 405th telescope overall, and it was his 37th telescope of this size. It came to the Museum from the Burndy Library, through Bern Dibner.
James Short (1710-1768) began making reflecting telescopes while studying at the University of Edinburgh. He was elected F.R.S. in 1836, moved to London in 1738, and made some 1360 telescopes overall. In addition to his skill at figuring and polishing mirrors, his commercial success came from his use of the division of labor (he concentrated on the mirrors and bought the brass parts from others), a growing demand for telescopes, and the support of patrons.
Ref: D. J. Bryden, James Short and His Telescopes (Edinburgh, 1968).
Gerard L’E Turner, “James Short, F.R.S., and his Contribution to the Construction of Reflecting Telescopes,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 24 (1969): 91-108.
Wild Heerbrugg described the Distomat DI3000 as "the fastest infra-red EDM with geodetic accuracy." With a laser diode light source, it had a range of 14 km. It was also relatively light (3.7 lb.), and could used in a yoke or fit onto any Wild optical or electronic theodolite. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency transferred this example to the Smithsonian in 2000.
In an effort to get a better fix on the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the United States sponsored eight parties to observe the 1874 transit of Venus across the face of the sun, and equipped each with apparatus made by Alvan Clark & Sons. This 5-inch aperture achromatic lens in a brass cell was probably the objective for one of the eight equatorial refractors. The inscription on the cell reads “857”. This was sent to Peking for the 1874 transit.
Ref: Simon Newcomb, ed., Observations of the Transit of Venus, December 8-9, 1874 (Washington, D.C., 1880), p. 16.
William A. Davis was an Englishman who settled in San Leandro, California, and offered a range of inexpensive plastic nautical instruments for boating enthusiasts. He introduced the Mark III sextant in 1963, and the instrument is still in production. Like the sextant that Cruver made for the U.S. Maritime Commission during the war, the Mark III is made of polystyrene. It has a simple eye tube, and a scale that is graduated every degree from -35° to +100° and read by vernier to 2 minutes of arc. The original Mark III cost $9.95. This example was probably made in the late 1960s. The sextant's arm is inscribed "DAVIS INSTRUMENTS CORP. / 857 THORNTON STREET / SAN LEANDRO / CALIF. 94577 / U.S.A."
Ref: William A. Davis, How to Find Your Position with a Sextant (San Leandro, 1966 and 1968).