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l. Bernard Cohen and David Wheatland of Harvard University prepare the large orrery* or planetarium, for the exhibition of scientific apparatus used at Harvard College during the colonial period. The figures around the frame are bronze castings of Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and James Botctloin. They were cast by Paul Revere
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Steam temperature-pressure apparatus to demonstrate increased boiling point tvith pressure. Valve permits escape of included air. Mercury rises in glass tube to give measure of pressure while temperature is read directly on the thermometer
Early Scientific Apparatus Put on Exhibit A PART of the surviving instruments and scientific collections used at Harvard College in the period ending 1837 were recently placed on public exhibition at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Laboratory of Harvard University. Assembled by a committee headed by David Wheatland of the physics department and including I. Bernard Cohen, historian of science, and Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard historian, the exhibit will remain open for about a year. The material shows that contrary to the statements of some historians, at the beginning of the 19th century Harvard College gave its students something more than "a fair training in Latin and Greek, a little mathematics, and a touch of theology if they so inclined." Nature of the instruments indicates that they were used both for research and the advancement of knowledge as well as teaching. None of the items in the collection date back bej^ond 1764. In that year, Harvard Hall, which housed the "philosophical chambers/' burned to the ground. All of the instruments, as well as the infant school's library, were destroyed. AYithin 15 years, however, by gift and purchase, Harvard had assembled a new collection of "philosophical apparatus." Identification of much of the material posed the greatest problem to the comLeft. Chemical equivalents slide mittee. By using old inventories, inrule invented by William H. WolIas ton. It is 12 inches long and voices, descriptions of gifts, and bits of marked, "Published by W. Cary, correspondence, the committee suc182 Strand, Jan. 1, 1814." The ceeded in identifying much of the marule is set icith 100 at muriate of soda and shoves, according to an terial. Some was identified by comillustration in Gorham's book on paring the actual pieces of apparatus chemistry of 1819, that "if viewed with pictures of similar devices in 18th as chloride o f sodium, that it concentury textbooks and catalogs. tainsôO.2chlorine and 39.8 sodium" 616
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