[Seth-Trips] Slide rules! Physics auction, June 30
Seth David Schoen
schoen at loyalty.org
Thu Jun 27 14:31:34 PDT 2002
A gracious lady in Berkeley passed on a tip about this exciting
auction (which I think conflicts with the Bootable Business Card
meeting the same day).
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/06/27_physics.html
Tom Colton with instruments
Thomas Colton of the Physics Department shows off a few of the
hundreds of voltmeters, ampmeters, electroscopes and resistors
unearthed from the attic of LeConte Hall. Noah Berger photo
From attic to auction: antique instruments to raise money for Physics
Department
27 June 2002
By Bonnie Azab Powell, Public Affairs
BERKELEY - Inside the soaring, wood-beamed warehouse of Oakland's
Harvey Clars auction house, there are enough precious items to fill
several mansions: grand pianos, Art Nouveau benches, a Henri II dining
suite, Persian rugs, Limoges dinnerware. In their midst huddles an
unusual group of objects, looking as ill at ease as engineers at a
costume ball.
A little after 10 a.m. on Sunday, June 30, Harvey Clars will open the
bidding on this handful of antique scientific instruments -- and
vintage Tinker Toys used for molecular models -- excavated from
storage by UC Berkeley's Physics Department. This is just a test sale,
through which the auction house will gauge the interest in an
additional 400 or so voltmeters, galvanometers, balances, microscopes,
collision-ball apparatuses, demonstration-size slide rules, and other
items it plans to sell July 27-28. The Physics Department will use the
proceeds to buy new equipment like computers, sensors, and microphones
for its undergraduate laboratories.
The instruments emerged from decades of seclusion in May, when the
department began preparing to move out of the older wing of LeConte
Hall to allow a seismic retrofit. In Physics' temporary home, Hearst
Annex, space is at a premium. Thomas Colton, the instructional support
group's director, thus faced the monumental housecleaning challenge of
emptying out a 5,000-square-foot attic (with no elevator access) as
well as numerous basement storage cupboards.
"We didn't realize how much there was until we actually got up on
ladders and started pulling things out," Colton says. "We thought we
would fill up one lab room, and we did but we weren't even a quarter
of the way finished." The storage contents ultimately covered every
available inch of the tables in two laboratories. Colton called in
faculty members, including Professor Emeritus Howard Shugart, to help
identify the instruments, deciding which to set aside for Harvey
Clars, which to consign to the university's Excess and Salvage, and
which to keep for historical interest and as gifts for departing
faculty. The department hopes to acquire display cases for the
equipment for public viewing; until then, it will be stored in a
secure room in Birge Hall.
[...]
AUCTION INFO
Harvey Clars Auction Gallery
5644 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
Open for viewing Friday, June 28, 1-6 p.m. and Saturday, June 29, 10
a.m.-5 p.m.
Auction starts at 10 a.m., Sunday, June 30. Proceeds benefit the
Berkeley Physics Department. Directions and more information for
buyers at www.harveyclar.com
[...]
Among the other objects saved were an eight-foot-long demonstration
slide rule, some chemical balances with fine wooden cases and brass
fittings, and a beautiful old ampere balance for measuring electric
current that Shugart remembers using in the Physics 111 lab, an
advanced course for seniors. There were no early calculators found.
"Years ago [physics professor Raymond] Birge had a room with six or
eight desk calculators and comptometers that we used for summarizing
grades, which would take me three hours a night," recalls Shugart.
"Then in the mid-'50s Lawrence Berkeley Lab got its first electronic
calculator and cut that time to an hour. I suppose the old ones went
to salvage; I hope somebody bought them."
Consigning such beautifully crafted, if now useless instruments to the
junkpile was exactly what Colton hoped to avoid. Two years ago, the
Physics Department held an event for high school science teachers from
around the Bay Area. It invited them to take home some of the most
recently outdated equipment, such as spectroscopes, oscilloscopes and
power supplies.
[...]
Although one of the large demonstration slide rules stayed on the
Berkeley campus, a four-foot version of the old calculating device
will be in Harvey Clars' preview sale. It's possible it will fetch the
highest price of the group: a seven-foot demonstration slide rule from
Keuffel & Esser sold recently on eBay for $499. Also for sale is a
Portable Precision Potentiometer (about as portable as the early
personal computers) by the Rubicon Company, which can fetch between
$200 and $500.
[...]
--
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Reading is a right, not a feature!
http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | -- Kathryn Myronuk
http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ |
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