It seems the university has drifted away from this, but if you look around at old equipment, a great deal of it is marked with the date it was acquired and – if it’s old enough – the cost. They’re fascinating glimpses into the past.
Here, an optics bench made by the Central Scientific Co. of Chicago, Illinois. Or, as they’d prefer, Cenco of Chicago, U.S.A. This particular 132cm chunk of cast iron and steel joined the department in late September of 1943, for the low, low price of $40. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator, that’s an excessively specific $681.17 in today’s dollars. (Significant digits!)
Up until now, it’s been in more or less continuous lab use, only recently replaced by brand-new extruded aluminum optics benches. Almost 80 years, and they’re not entirely kaput just yet.
After all, if an apparatus continues to be useful, we’ll keep it around. This one is getting repurposed for future labs, so we’ll see how many more decades it has in it…