Scientific equipment

“ Besides the ordinary furnishings for comfortable living, we saw air-condensing machines for use in lofty flights, a good-sized telescope, instruments for measuring speed and height, and other scientific apparatus of much of which we were obliged to ask the use. ”

“ How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument! Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker, they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. ”

“ How shall a machine be constructed that shall most efficiently embody, and accord with, not only those scientific principles, but also all of those principles of engineering practice that so vitally affect the economical value of every machine? ”

“ Within the period we are considering, the employment of testing-machines has come into the daily practice of the engineer; by the use of these he is made experimentally acquainted with the various physical properties of the materials he employs, and is also enabled in the largest of these machines to test the strength and usefulness of these materials, when assembled into forms, to resist strains, as columns or as girders. ”

“ This principle has been applied to our machinery as well as to our workmen, with the result that we have gradually accumulated a large plant of special machinery of the most accurate construction, each machine especially adapted to the manufacture of some particular part of our microscopes. By this development of mechanical appliances for microscope manufacture two ends have been attained:—The greatest accuracy and uniformity of construction of our microscopes has been made possible, while at the same time it has been possible to cheapen the cost of manufacture. ”

“ When you think of an outfit retailing for 50c. and covering the whole subject of "Static Electricity," giving 60 scientific experiments upon its production, conduction and induction, with a 55–page book of instructions with 38 drawings, and a complete set of apparatus of 20 articles for performing these 60 experiments, you will understand why the sales of this outfit have been enormous. As the subject is presented in a fascinating way—and not as mere dry science—every one likes to do the experiments. ”

“ All those who cultivate experimental science are aware that it is useful to unite with theoretical ideas that manual dexterity which is acquired by the student accustoming himself to practical operations. One cannot too strongly urge both chemists and physicists to exercise themselves in the construction of the appliances they require, and also to modify those already existing, which may be adapted to their wants. In a large number of cases it is possible to manufacture, at small expense, delicate instruments, capable of rendering the same service as the most elaborate apparatus. ”

“ For scientific instrument makers, one need only examine the nineteenth century city directories of Boston, Philadelphia and New York to find hundreds of names of craftsmen and firms. It is, to be sure, an antiquarian research, for one does not expect to find great discoveries coming from these people. But just as in Europe, it is a populous trade, influential in the growth of science and highly effective in spreading and intensifying the itch for ingenious instruments and devices. ”

“ In the manufacture of such machines great attention and the highest scientific skill has been paid, first, to the material composing the wheel, and to the cementing substances by which the emery is compacted and bound in the strongest manner, to prevent bursting when driven at great speed; secondly, to the construction of machines and wheels of a composition varying from the finest to the coarsest ”

“ During his senior year in the high-school, the chemical and physical apparatus of the laboratory of the school was placed under his charge. In this year he constructed an electric motor having its field magnets as well as its armature excited by the electric current. He also constructed a microscope and a telescope, making all the parts himself, down to the grinding of the lenses. He devised an apparatus for turning on the gas in the street-lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning it off again. ”

“ They serve not only in commerce and manufacture, but in promoting the strictly scientific work of the laboratory. Now that electricity purifies copper as fire cannot, the mathematician is able to treat his problems of long-distance transmission, of traction, of machine design, with an economy and certainty impossible when his materials were not simply impure, but impure in varying and indefinite degrees. The factory and the workshop originally took their magneto-machines from the experimental laboratory ”

“ The sort of thing that an engineer would probably do is -- is haul some test equipment out to the area and set it up with a computer so that it logs the conditions automatically every so many minutes for -- for some hours or days, so that we have actual measurements using lab-type equipment as opposed to user complaints. ”

“ Hence, while well equipped physical and chemical laboratories are still a necessary part of the communication engineer's equipment, he is equally active in pushing his investigations in many other directions. Questions involved in the making of proper rate schedules and adequate fundamental plans for new construction are originating profound researches in such fields as political science, psychology and mathematics. ”

“ The laboratory is a labyrinth of belts, large and small, of wheels, big and little, of pulleys and lathes. A student, at a word from the instructor, moves a lever a few inches, and the breath of life is breathed into the complicated mass of machinery. The throbbing heart of the engine far away sends the currents of its power along shafting and pulleys. The dull, monotonous whir of steam-driven machinery salutes the ear, and the twenty-four students take their places at the lathes. ”

“ There was not much of the latter in sight, and to the novice unfamiliar with the interior of a physicist’s laboratory, and who carries away a confused impression of glass and metal jars, tubes, coils of wire, electric batteries, revolving discs, and all the nameless paraphernalia of such a place, the appointments of Harold Leighton’s workshop would seem simple enough. Yet, the machine before which Leighton paused comprised one of the newest discoveries in this branch of science. Its sensational purpose was to measure and probe the mind through the purely physical operations of the body. ”

“ The Chemical Engineering Laboratory is arranged for the study of unit operations by the students of the chemical course. The apparatus is commercial equipment of modern design, which has been equipped with numerous meters, gauges and measuring devices for accurately testing the machines. The students make quantitative studies of factory operations and of the problems involved in the design of equipment. The unit operations studied include heat transfer, fluid flow, distillation, evaporation, drying, etc. ”

“ The central piece of apparatus of the Institute laboratory is the Emery machine, similar to the great machine at the Watertown arsenal, with a capacity of three hundred thousand pounds. But in addition to this machine there are a dozen or more other machines designed to test beams, columns, rope, wire and, in fact, materials of every kind and in every form. An interesting machine is that for testing shafts in torsion, and it is instructive to see it twist off with apparent ease a steel shaft three inches in diameter, twisting the fibers before they break till the rod resembles a barber's pole. ”

“ Agents for manufacturers of large machinery will be able to show to prospective purchasers pictures of their machines in actual operation. Living, moving portraits have been taken, and by means of a hand machine can be as easily examined as pictures through a stereoscope. It is quite within the bounds of possibility that circulating libraries of moving pictures will be established, and that every public school will have a projecting apparatus for the use of films, and a stereopticon or a mutoscope. ”

“ We might linger in the departments where accumulators, sparking plugs, and other parts of the electrical apparatus of a car are made, or in the laboratory where chemists pry into the results of a new alloy, aided by powerful microscopes and marvellously delicate scales. But we will stop only to note the powerful machine which is stretching and crushing metal to ascertain its toughness. No care in experimenting is spared. The chemist, poring over his test tubes, plays as important a part in the construction of a car as the foundry man or the turner. ”

“ Few areas of effort are advancing this extremely promising art faster than space exploration, which places a premium on light weight and small size. The miniaturization of equipment being placed in U.S. satellites, for example, has been one of the contemporary wonders of the world of science.
A big part of this march toward tiny equipment is in the field of electronics, where the process is called microminiaturization, molecular electronics, micromodular engineering or a number of other terms. ”

“ The house to be used as a laboratory is near the water, and the equipment includes boats, nets, dredges, aquaria, books, microscopes, and all the necessary appliances for collecting and studying marine animals and plants, and a steam-launch for dredging and surface collecting. ”

“ In telegraphy and in the new arts of applying electricity to lighting, to the transmission of power, and to metallurgical operations, problems arise at every turn, requiring for their solution not only an intimate acquaintance with, but a positive advance upon, electrical science, as established by purely theoretical research in the laboratory. In general engineering, the mere practical art of constructing a machine so designed and proportioned as to produce mechanically the desired effect would suffice no longer. ”

“ The laboratory equipment consisted of a dynamo, a motor, and an alternator, with some so-called practical measuring instruments. When I compared the facilities of the new “Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia College” with that of the Polytechnic School in Berlin, I felt somewhat humbled, but not discouraged. I said to Crocker: “Our guns are small and few in number; the men behind the guns will have to expand much beyond their present size if this department is to make any impression upon the electrical art.” ”

“ Not only has science benefited manufacturers, but also operatives, because the extension of science to manufacturing purposes has compelled them to make themselves acquainted with intellectual subjects. "Instead of remaining mere machines, mechanically performing the work set before them, they are obliged to exercise the faculties of observation and judgment in watching the results and directing the action of mechanical, physical, and chemical powers. ”

“ Many laboratories in this country, especially in the west, are located a long way from any professional glass-blower, and the time and money spent in shipping broken apparatus several hundred miles to be mended could often be saved if some of the laboratory force could seal on a new stopcock, replace a broken tube, or make some temporary repairs. Many men in physical or chemical laboratories have occasion to modify some piece of apparatus designed perhaps for other uses, or to design new apparatus. ”

“ It can be surmised, therefore, that surveying instruments, as well as instruments for other purposes, were produced in both brass [Pg 69] and wood simultaneously by many of the New England makers in order to provide suitable instruments in a flexible price range to meet the demands of the trade. Whereas today modern manufacturing methods make it possible to produce instruments in a wide variety, both in quality and price, to suit the needs and capabilities of every prospective purchaser, the production facilities of the 18th century were much more limited. ”

“ This steamship has recently been fitted up with the most approved compound engines, which have been perfected by the labors of those physicists, Rankine and Thomson. "What is meant by the word physics?" asks the manufacturer, with a telephone to his ear, listening to a response from his factory. The solicitor for the endowment of a physical laboratory has the satisfaction, even if he fails to obtain a subscription, of feeling that he is a public educator. ”

“ In the Emery system of machines, consisting of scales, gages, and dynamometers, the power exerted on the material tested is transmitted from the load to an indicating device by means of liquid acting on diaphragms. ”

“ There must be a uniform, prime-moving engine of two horse power, a dynamo-electric machine thoroughly adjusted, a large Ruhmkorff coil with its Foucault break in the best order, a battery of Leyden-jars carefully proportioned to the Plücker's tube in use, a heliostat which of course involves clear sunshine, an optical train of slit, prisms, lenses, and camera well focused, and, in addition to all this, a photographic laboratory in such complete condition that wet, sensitive plates can be prepared which will bear an exposure of fifteen minutes and a prolonged development. ”

“ It is true that in a well-appointed laboratory, where apparatus is collected together in greater or less profusion, the appeal is often very indirect, and to a student carrying out a set experiment with apparatus provided to his hand, the temptation to ignore the mechanical basis of his work is often irresistible. ”