Old Analytical Balance
I've had this thing for almost 30 years. It came from a professor at Cornell University who also ran his own soils engineering business. I don't know when it was made, but surely no later than the mid 1940s from what little I know of the guy. In the soils lab at my place of work, we have electronic scales that weigh out to this degree of precision (0.01 gram) in a few seconds. With this balance, it's a long and rather tedious process to come up with the result, but hey, old machines are cool. Also, the method of operation here is not subject to variance within different parts of the working range, as is the case with electronic scales, so it's actually a better machine than modern scales, in that regard at least.
The weights are only handled with soft-surface forceps. Touching them with the fingers would soon change their mass enough to matter, via transfer of skin oils and dirt.
As a final note here, the balance has an over-built steel case finished with thick enamel paint, which was typical of such equipment back in those days. That, along with the decorative design are features that would be too expensive to include on anything built nowadays. And just look at the attention to detail that went into making the box for the weights!
Old Analytical Balance
I've had this thing for almost 30 years. It came from a professor at Cornell University who also ran his own soils engineering business. I don't know when it was made, but surely no later than the mid 1940s from what little I know of the guy. In the soils lab at my place of work, we have electronic scales that weigh out to this degree of precision (0.01 gram) in a few seconds. With this balance, it's a long and rather tedious process to come up with the result, but hey, old machines are cool. Also, the method of operation here is not subject to variance within different parts of the working range, as is the case with electronic scales, so it's actually a better machine than modern scales, in that regard at least.
The weights are only handled with soft-surface forceps. Touching them with the fingers would soon change their mass enough to matter, via transfer of skin oils and dirt.
As a final note here, the balance has an over-built steel case finished with thick enamel paint, which was typical of such equipment back in those days. That, along with the decorative design are features that would be too expensive to include on anything built nowadays. And just look at the attention to detail that went into making the box for the weights!