Tag: documentation

Force Table (again)

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Force table surface, etched with date of purchase and price paid. From April 1964 for $96.75.
Cast iron holds up.

We’ve pointed out our old and reliable force tables before – classics of the undergraduate physics experience – which arrived here in several installments. Previously, 1957. This young’un only appeared in April of 1964, intended for the Physics 107-8 lab. Not listed in any recent course catalog, we’re uncertain of exactly what that was.

We could probably go pester some librarians, because surely there’s a record, but those folks are awfully busy on more important matters. Leave the idle wondering to the fellows here in the basement.

At any rate, they paid a healthy sum of $96.75 for this precision-machined beast. In today’s dollars: $985.65.

Do you think we’ve gotten our money’s worth yet?

Vernier calipers

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Vernier calipers with purchase date and price.
60 years of precision.

A reliable set of Vernier calipers, still working just fine. We use all manner of measuring calipers around here, with varying degrees of precision for different duties, but it’s nice to see the classics still performing well after six decades. Purchased in April of 1962, for the low, low price of $7.85.

Today’s dollars: $77.46.

Force table

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Force table with acquisition info.
More yellow paint!

Some equipment just keeps on working, year after year. This force table – an apparatus used to illustrate static equilibrium and vectors in a way that’s loads more fun than Excel, but the students still have to learn Excel – was purchased in February of 1957 for the not-insignificant sum of $87.50.

Today’s dollars: $935.89.

Acquisition Dates

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Optics rail acquisition 9/27/43, for $40.00
Most impressive is that the yellow paint has lasted this long.

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!)

Cenco plate
Surely there’s a reason for the cities listed in that order.

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…