- Subject
- Electronic instruments
- Item type
- Object
- Makers
- Elliott Brothers
- Provenance
- From the Daubeny Laboratory, Magdalen College, Oxford.
- Primary inscriptions
- Signed on inset ivory disc: "ELLIOTT BROTHERS/30 STRAND/LONDON", with a later metal plaque inscribed: "Presented to / Dr. Daubeny. / by / Bunsen. / 18"
- Object type
- Electronic instrument
- Dimensions
- Height: 310mm Width: 480mm Depth: 450mm Weight: 2.25kg
- Inventory No
- 14589
Description
Triangular mahogany box on three brass legs, with telescope and collimator fixed to two sides, used in chemical analysis. The prism table is rotated by means of an arm with a Vernier scale outside box. Three glass bottle prisms with stoppers are included.
Elliotts were at 30 Strand for the short period 1858-63.
The association with Bunsen indicated by the plaque is spurious. The spectroscope was made to order for the Oxford chemist Charles Daubeny, evidently based upon the illustration in Bunsen and Kirchhoff's classic paper of 1860, which shows the laboratory prototype with which they conducted their pioneering experiments. Commercial spectroscopes of standard design came on the market within a year or two.
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