Early days of biochemical spectroscopy at Liverpool

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From 1924 to 1940 R.A. Morton1 was Special Lecturer in Spectroscopy in the Chemistry Department of the University of Liverpool. He used a Hilger E3 prism spectrograph (Figure 1) attached to a rotating sector photometer (Figure 2) and illuminated by two types of light source (see later). Before considering how Morton's activities moved from pure chemistry into biological chemistry, it is interesting to know how this antediluvian apparatus functioned, because it is highly unlikely that any reader under the age of 70 years will have seen it, let alone used it.