Wooden case containing a nickel-plated aspirator (pump), hose, three nozzles and two mouth gags. This device, which could be used as a stomach pump or to administer enemas, is stamped “A. L. Hernstein / NEW YORK.” Hermann Hernstien was a German immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1841 and established a medical instrument company soon thereafter. His son, Albert L. Hernstein, took charge of the business about 1867. The purple velvet in the case suggests that this pump was made before the introduction of aseptic instruments in the early 1890s.
Jacquard-woven picture with image of Columbus sighting America. Sewn onto a mounting mat. "COLUMBUS SIGHTING AMERICA / DESIGNED AND WOVEN AT THE / ARLINGTON MILLS / LAWRENCE MASSACHUSETTS U.S.A."
At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893, Arlington Mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, offered for sale woven images of Columbus Sighting America that were designed and produced by the mill. They provided extensive information about the weaving process: number of Jacquard cards required for the design (21,024), warps (3,850), picks per inch (240), loom speed (100 picks per minute), the length of time needed to make two side-by-side images (1 ¼ hour). The image was based on a work by German historical painter Herman Freihold Pluddeman in 1836.
Pictures like these functioned as commemoratives and also as exemplars of excellence celebrating the American textile industry. Jacquard woven bookmarks and pictures were both an expression of technical virtuosity for textile manufacturers and a popular novelty item for consumers.
The Arlington Mills began operations in 1865 in Lawrence and Methuen, Mass. By 1925 this mill complex was one of the largest in the country. In the 1890s Arlington patented a wool scouring process using the chemical naptha that revolutionized the cleaning of raw wool and the manufacturing of the wool fiber called “Tops” in the US. Arlington Mills produced woolen cloth for the US Army and Navy during both the First and Second World Wars: its production was totally taken up by these services. The company began to close its various mills in 1952, a victim of post-WWII difficulties in procuring wool and the expansion of synthetic fiber manufacturing in the American textile industry.
ATHM Collection - # 1996.96; Gift of Sabina Ekstrand
Commercial carbon filament lamp, possibly of European make. Brass bayonet base with collar, fiber insulator, nubs instead of pins, brass contact ring, two dimples on opposite sides. Single-arch carbon filament with crimp & paste connectors, 2-piece platinum leads, flat Mather-style press. Tipped pear-shaped envelope with taper at neck. 90 degree twist in filament. No extant markings. Donor’s card reads: “Quarter turn U [i.e. single arch] filament bulb, squirted filament, dates from after 1894, in which the filament is twisted 90 degrees to give a better light pattern than the straight filament.”
Commercial carbon lamp. Brass medium-screw base with insulator retainer, porcelain insulator. Single-arch carbon filament with crimp & paste connectors, 2-piece leads. Tipped, pear-shaped envelope. Mather press? No extant markings. Donor’s card reads: “U [i.e. single arch] filament carbon lamp, squirted filament type, dates from 1888 to 1894, when General Electric Company adopted this type of filament. Cotton fiber was dissolved in hot zinc chloride. The soft mass of material was then squirted through a die, falling into alcohol which hardened it. Washed several times in water to remove the zinc chloride, the thread was wound on drums and dried. The result was an evenly wound strong filament material that could be cut to any length before carbonizing. Squirted filaments made this way ... were used in practically all carbon lamps made in the US in 1894 and thereafter.”
