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Wimshurst Twin Plate Electrostatic Machine, by Harvey & Peak, London, 1898

Inventory Number 82113

Acknowledgement: © History of Science Museum, University of Oxford, inv.82113

Item type
Object
Provenance
Presented by Captain E. G. Spencer Churchill in 1939.
Primary inscriptions
The Wimshurst induction machine, which provided the electricity required to work the X-ray tube, is signed "HARVEY & PEAK LONDON"
Dimensions
Height: 515mm
Inventory No
82113
Accession Number
1939-15

Description

Part of apparatus purchased by E. G. Spencer-Churchill, an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1898, and used by him for taking X-ray images of the limbs of his friends for amusement purposes.

On the outbreak of the Boer War, the owner became a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, and the apparatus was taken to South Africa, where it was used to assist the Royal Army Medical Corps to locate bullets, shrapnel, splinters or fractures caused by enemy action. It was in use there between 1900 and 1902.

For other parts of the apparatus, see Inv 69823 and Inv 78574.

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