Harvard University.
Harvard University records pertaining to the apparatus of the Rumsford Professorship and Lectureship on the Application of Science to the Useful Arts, 1835-1836.
The records document the use of the Rumford apparatus, a collection of scientific instruments and working models used for the promotion of the practical sciences by Daniel Treadwell, Joseph Lovering, and Eben Norton Horsford at Harvard University in the 1830s and 1850s. The financial ledger, catalogue, and lists of articles in this collection illustrate the wide range of instruments comprising the apparatus, provide a glimpse into the scientific instruction and knowledge given to students at Harvard, illustrate the use of the apparatus by the Mathematics department, and note the acquisition of instruments and models from England in the early nineteenth century.
Harvard University is an Ivy League university established in 1836.
The Rumford apparatus was comprised of a collection of scientific instruments and working models used for the promotion of the practical sciences and the demonstration of the usefulness of science to daily life. The apparatus was established in 1816 by Jacob Bigelow, the first Rumford Professor and Lecturer on the Application of Science to the Useful Arts, and in subsequent years grew to include many items including a high pressure steam engine, a working model of a condensing engine, several model water wheels, a complete operating model of a cotton spinning machine and power loom, a slide rest lathe, a model of a last and block machine, a model of a railway, locomotive engine, and railroad car, an air pump, a model of a chronometer, common watch, and clock escapements, and a large number of plaster models of buildings and architectural structures.
Horsford, Eben Norton, 1818-1893.
Lovering, Joseph, 1813-1892
Rumford, Benjamin, Graf von, 1753-1814
Treadwell, Daniel, 1791-1872
Harvard University.
Harvard University.
Physics -- Study and teaching
Science -- Social aspects.
Scientific apparatus and instruments.
Catalogs. aat
Correspondence. aat
AIP-ICOS
Harvard University. Archives. Pusey Library. Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.