Engineering & Technology
History and Origins
All instruments of science are, theoretically, instruments of engineering and technology, inasmuch as they represent the technological expertise and engineering abilities of the time. Science and technology have progressed hand-in-hand in mutual dependence, which has lead some authorities on antiques to lump them together. For our purposes we include along with the standard repertoire of instruments of engineering and technology those of physics, geophysics and the so-called philosophical instruments. Science depends on the ability of engineering to create devises that apply new scientific discoveries as well as to provide the instruments scientists need to conduct further investigation, study and experimentation.
We can broadly classify engineering and technological instruments as those used for communication, transportation, photography, energy conversion, comfort, convenience, entertainment, production, construction, mining, manufacture, monitoring, engineering and geophysical models and most testing and electrical devises. Technological items used by scientists may have special or historical significance and be included with collections of scientific instruments. Technological progress has been in the fast lane for the past 100 years and even more rapidly telescoped over the past few decades. For this reason, items of technology can become collectable in a relatively short period of time. Since there are thousands of engineering and technology instruments, we can only mention a few of them here.
(Excerpts from Opticalia-Antiques’ Reference Guide to Antique Instruments of Science, Technology & Discovery. Details and ordering information coming soon.)
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Cameras & Projectors (42)
The magic lantern, the precursor to overhead or slide projectors, was invented in 1643 and originally used candlelight to project an enlarged image on a wall or other flat surface. Solar microscopes were also invented in the seventeenth century along similar principles. They are small brass tubes mounted to a brass plate (rarely silver) and use sunlight to project a large image of a microscope slide. Fixed photography was invented about 1827 and hardwood cased bellows cameras with brass fittings were made into the early 1900s, becoming common after dry plate film was developed around 1870. The larger the camera, the larger the photograph, a line of logic that lead to creation of the world’s largest camera in 1858, ‘The Mammoth’. It was over 15 feet long, used 500 lb glass plates and weighed 1400 lbs loaded. Continuous roll film was patented in 1885, leading to the first roll film box type camera from Kodak. Kodak’s famous Brownie line of cameras sold in the millions from 1900, and in 1921 the modern 35mm camera with interchangeable lenses was introduced by Leica. The oldest existing photographs of people are from 1840 when they had to sit still for about a 20-minute exposure time and when subjects were held often held rigid with head and arm braces. Motion picture cameras began recording crude films in the 1890s. Stereoscopes (both table top and hand-held) became the rage of home entertainment after Sir David Brewster’s improved viewer was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. They operated off the principle of parallax where two images or photographs of the same subject but at slightly different angles are viewed side by side so they are seen in 3-D. -
Communications (18)
Communication by written word reached an historic milestone in 1454 with the invention by Johann Gutenburg of the Gutenburg moveable type press. Modern communication technology dates to the invention of the telegraph in 1831, Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless telegraph in 1894, Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1876, satellite phones and cell phones from the late 1980s and the first television sets in 1936. -
Electrical Devices (12)
There were five important commercial instruments for measuring various electrical parameters developed around 1882 in response to interest in electric lighting: the voltmeter, ammeter, ohmmeter, wattmeter, and electric supply meter. Many of these small instruments are mounted in attractive hardwood cases with gauges and brass fittings. Geissler tubes, invented in 1850, evolved into colourful twisted glass conversation pieces, then into the microchip in 1959. Electric powered lighting remained impractical throughout most of the nineteenth century, but experiments with lighting lead to the arc-lamp of 1808, which used two carbon rods and then to the carbon filament lamp invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Prior to electric lighting in the 1880s and a source to direct intense light, scientists used the heliostat, dating back to Willem Gravesande’s invention of 1742. Heliostats use mirrors attached to a rotating arm powered by a clock mechanism that follows the sun in order to keep the projection of light stationary for a variety of purposes. -
Lamps & Mine Lights (16)
The subject of antique lamps is broad, so only lamps with industrial or transportation applications are collected for our purposes. The evolution of lamps for all applications, including domestic, have paralleled one another, changing mostly along with development of new fuels but also new designs aimed to control drip and extend burn time. The oil and grease torches of ancient times were eventually replaced by a succession of oil burning, wick, open pan Cruise, double Cruise, and covered pan lamps, the Betty lamp with its wick guides, brass and steel frog lamps, open flame safety lamps, acetylene and kerosene lamps, carbide lamps and eventually electric rechargeable battery lamps as the 20th Century matured. Tallow candles proliferated in the 17th Century and were still in use in homes, buildings and mines well into the 1900s. Of course there are many rural areas yet on Earth where oil and kerose lamps and candles are still the principle forms of lighting. The carbide lamp was first patented in the U.S. in 1900, and battery lamps, although in use earlier, did not become practical until battery storage and battery life were extended by improvements in the second quarter of the 1900s. Competition to invent an effective Miner's Safety Lamp for use in coal mines was finally trumped by invention of the Davy lamp in 1815. The Davy, Wolf, and kindred safety lamps were used in mines well into the 1900s. -
Measurement and Detection (34)
Gauges have been in use since men used poles with depth gauge marks to determine the amount of wine in a barrel. Meters, indicators, process controllers, tachometers and governors have been manufactured for hundreds of purposes described in more detail in the Reference Guide. Micrometers measure small divisions of length, width, depth and angles and have had phenomenally widespread application in both science and engineering. Cathetometers are a precision instrument developed around 1810 to measure the difference in level or height between two points such as the surface dilation of a mercury column. The spherometer was designed to measure thickness of thin plates and to measure curved surfaces. Calipers in a myriad of designs for a multitude of purposes, some with lever magnification gauges, date back to more basic designs in the 1700s. -
Watch Making & Time Keepers (14)
The pendulum clock, patented by Christiaan Huygens in 1657, greatly improved the measurement of small intervals of time, a critical parameter basic to scientific investigation. Galileo had worked with pendulums, but Huygens succeeded by altering the normal pendulum in a way that makes it oscillate more rhythmically. About the time Christiaan Huygens was developing his pendulum clock, Robert Hooke was experimenting with spring drives, and by 1700 the clock was a portable devise that could keep time to within a minute. Atomic clocks, first developed in 1949, use electromagnetic oscillations generated by energy state transitions within an atom. -
Everyday & Miscellaneous Technology (20)
Everyday Technology is the traditional category for household or common street items that were engineered and made to technical specifications of the day and thus outside the abilities of your average homeowner and his or her garage tools. There are several hundred items of this nature that have become popular with collectors, most of them produced within the last 50 years. Technology is advancing at a speed incomprehensible to most of us. We have all become accustom to short cycle phases of mass production, obsolescence and replacement. So, first year production series of anything technical are collectable, even if invented some few years ago. Normally included in this category are sewing machines, typewriters, electic fans, radios, televions, cameras, home projectors, kitchen appliances, mechanical and electrical utensils and tools, domestic lamps, watches, clocks, phones, anything electronic, and sometimes power toys and games. We have, by way of preference, placed some of these items in other sections of Engineering and Technology or in Personal Accessories. And we have organized most measuring devices, postal and kitchen scales, watches, writing instruments and clerical items in these respective categories. Also, since we had no appropriate category for some items, patent models for example, we have added, with tongue in check, the highly irregular, even suspicious title of 'Miscellaneous Items' to this section, at least temporarily. To our museum staff's credit though, note that only items of an arguably technical nature or with properties that illustrate an important or interesting historical event or development will be displayed.