Scientific Instrument Makers Research Articles

Making and Collecting Instruments in Fair Verona: The Case of the Italian Amateur Scientist Gaetano Spandri (1796\u20131859)

Gaetano Spandri (1796–1859) was a “diligent scholar of the physical sciences,” a private collector and maker of scientific instruments who worked in Verona in the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in Verona, the city famous as the setting of Shakespeare’s iconic masterpiece Romeo and Juliet Spandri was primarily a physicist and astronomer, but he was also interested in meteorology and natural sciences. The main sources of information about his scientific work are handwritten papers, parts of his private correspondence, and scientific reports kept at the Verona Academy of Agriculture. For most of his life, he collaborated with the physicist Giuseppe Zamboni and was in contact with important physicists and astronomers of his time. His private apartment was equipped with a rich library, an astronomical and meteorological observatory, and a large room where he gathered a rich and important collection of scientific instruments.

Humfrey Cole Revisited

Abstract England’s first native scientific instrument maker, Humfrey Cole (c. 1530–1591), is well-known to historians thanks to a collection of twenty-six instruments and a map of Palestine that survive today in public and private ownership. Two recently studied instruments have enhanced our knowledge of Cole’s work: i) an horary quadrant, signed and dated 1573, now in the collections of the British Museum, and ii) an astronomical compendium, signed and dated 1590, held in a private collection. The unusual design of the horary quadrant demonstrates Cole’s versatile approach in adapting his products for specific customers, while certain features on the astronomical compendium, possibly the last piece ever made by Cole, suggest that he was aware of his final days and passed on his work to a younger maker, James Kynvyn (c. 1550–1615), hinting at a possible collaborative working relationship between these two generations of instrument makers in Elizabethan London.

RedShiftBio gets cash and a new CEO

The scientific-instrument maker RedShift BioAnalytics has raised $18 million in a series D fundraising round that included increased investment from Waters Corp. RedShiftBio says three major drug companies recently installed its infrared spectroscopy tool, used to measure tiny changes in protein structure. The Burlington, Massachusetts–based firm also hired a new CEO, Julien Bradley, a veteran of instrument firms like Thermo Fisher Scientific and Ahura Scientific.

Waters to buy lab automation firm

The scientific instrument maker Waters will acquire Andrew Alliance, a developer of lab automation technology, including software and robotics. Andrew Alliance has about 40 employees in Switzerland, France, and the US. One of its first products was a pipetting robot called Andrew. Waters CEO Chris O’Connell says the acquisition will benefit customers in pharmaceutical, life sciences, and materials science markets.

Diagnostics will continue to attract instrument makers

Scientific instrument makers have been moving into the clinical diagnostics market for years, and that’s a trend likely to continue, industry veterans say. It’s a path away from traditional analytical science markets but not one that will lead to neglect, they say. Among the major instrument makers, interest in diagnostics goes back to acquisitions such as Thermo Fisher Scientific’s 2011 purchase of the allergy diagnostics maker Phadia, and Agilent Technologies’ 2012 buy of the cancer diagnostics specialist Dako. In November, press reports indicated that Thermo Fisher was among those bidding for the Dutch diagnostics maker Qiagen. Though Qiagen has decided to remain independent, the addition of the Dutch firm, which has annual sales of $1.5 billion, could have added heft to Thermo’s nearly $4 billion-per-year specialty diagnostics business. David B. Patteson, CEO of the mass spectrometer maker Advion and an operating partner at the private equity firm Ampersand Capital Partners,

U.S. drug agency buys JEOL NMRs

Scientific instrument maker JEOL says the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of Forensic Sciences has ordered nine of its NMR spectrometers to combat traffic in illicit designer drugs. The 500-MHz instruments use the firm’s Royal HFX probe, which JEOL says enhances analysis of fluorine, an element that is increasingly used in many of the newer designer drugs.

Agilent seeks to regain spectrometry IP

Agilent Technologies has asked the Federal Trade Commission to allow it to license intellectual property (IP) it sold to Bruker in 2010 to gain approval for the purchase of rival scientific instrument maker Varian. The IP, which has to do with spectrometer design, was part of an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry business that is now owned by Analytik Jenna. Agilent wants to license the design IP from Jenna and, in return, license design IP to Jenna for inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. FTC says it will decide after May 1.

Thermo Fisher reveals first-of-its-kind clinical analyzer

Thermo Fisher Scientific has unveiled what it calls the first automated, easy-to-use liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry analyzer aimed at the clinical diagnostics market. The small-molecule analyzer is the latest example of a push by scientific instrument makers out of the research lab and into hospital and testing markets. The instrument, the Cascadion SM Clinical Analyzer, puts Thermo Fisher “well ahead of its LC/MS peers” including Waters, Agilent, Sciex, and Bruker, in the immunoanalyzer market, says analyst Puneet Souda of Leerink Partners in a note to clients. Souda values the market at $7 billion to $10 billion per year. It’s dominated by Siemens, Roche, Abbott, and Beckman Coulter, which use chemiluminescence and other techniques. LC/MS analyzers have been used in clinical labs for decades, notes Robert DeWitte, clinical diagnostics research vice president at Thermo Fisher. But although they can provide greater sensitivity and accuracy than traditional immunoassays, most LC/MS systems must be

Thermo Fisher to buy drug ingredients maker Patheon

Thermo Fisher Scientific has reached a deal to acquire Patheon for $7.2 billion, including debt. The transaction will take Thermo Fisher, a leading maker of scientific instruments and lab supplies, into a completely new market: pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing. The deal, which is expected to close at the end of this year, combines Thermo Fisher, which has 55,000 employees and annual sales exceeding $18 billion, with Patheon, which has 9,000 employees, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, and annual sales of $1.9 billion. Patheon was created in late 2013 when the Dutch chemical maker DSM combined its active pharmaceutical ingredients business with the original Patheon, a Canadian contract formulator of drugs in finished dose form. Patheon was majority owned by the private equity firm JLL Partners. Today, DSM and JLL together own 73% of Patheon’s shares. They have agreed to accept Thermo Fisher’s $35.00-per-share offer, which is a 66%

Exploding pumps trigger Sciex mass spectrometer alert

Scientific instrument maker Sciex has told owners of more than 2,000 mass spectrometers to immediately shut down the instruments because a catastrophic failure of turbo pumps manufactured by Agilent Technologies could “result in serious injury or death.” To date, Sciex says, no one has been injured. According to a safety notice dated March 13 for owners of API 4000, API 4000 Qtrap, and API 5000 model mass spectrometers, the rotors of the TV 801 turbo pump can suddenly fragment and be ejected at high speeds. The pumps are used to create a high negative pressure in the instrument’s vacuum chamber. Taking his API 4000 out of service will be financially crippling, says Bruce S. Levison, an assistant professor at the University of Toledo College of Medicine & Life Sciences who uses the machine to analyze tissue samples for pharmacologically relevant compounds. “We stand to lose thousands of dollars per day

Instruments, Tools and Materials

The Minutier central des notaires de Paris, which is preserved in the Archives nationales in Paris, is a huge archive group with several millions of documents recording all the official deeds written by the Parisian notaries. In it, it is possible to find very interesting documents concerning the activities of 19th century Parisian scientific instrument makers. I publish here the inventories of the instruments and tools which were in the workshop of two important makers: Jules Duboscq (1817–1886) and Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff (1803–1877). The first was compiled in 1859 after the death of Duboscq’s wife, the second when Ruhmkorff workshop was sold in 1878. These documents contain precious and original information concerning the organisation of the workshop, the instruments, the activities, and the trade of these renown instrument makers.

JAMES HENRY MARRIOTT: NEW ZEALAND'S FIRST PROFESSIONAL TELESCOPE-MAKER

James Henry Marriott was born in London in 1799 and trained as an optician and scientific instrument-maker. In 1842 he emigrated to New Zealand and in January 1843 settled in the newly-established town of Wellington. He was New Zealand's first professional telescope-maker, but we have only been able to locate one telescope made by him while in New Zealand, a brass 1-draw marine telescope with a 44-mm objective, which was manufactured in 1844. In 2004 this marine telescope was purchased in Hawaii by the second author of this paper. In this paper we offer a biographical sketch of Marriott, describe his 1844 marine telescope and discuss its provenance. We conclude that although he may have been New Zealand's first professional telescope-maker Marriott actually made very few telescopes or other scientific instruments. As such, rather than being recognised as a pioneer of telescope-making in New Zealand he should be remembered as the founder of New Zealand theatre.

Bruker To Exit Ailing Businesses

Citing “significant losses,” scientific instrument maker Bruker Corp. says it will stop selling some instrument lines and divest others, including its inductively coupled plasma/mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) business. The product lines, bought from Agilent Technologies four years ago, are used in food, energy, and environmental testing. Bruker will immediately stop selling stand-alone gas chromatography systems and GC/single-quadrupole MS systems. The firm also says it is seeking a buyer for its ICP/MS business and for its GC service business. Together, the businesses have annual sales of about $60 million and employ about 225 people. Chromatography businesses unaffected by the actions are Bruker’s EVOQ liquid chromatography/MS and Scion GC/triple-quadrupole MS product lines. The firm has historically been strong in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy instruments. Most of the businesses being shed formerly belonged to instrument maker Varian. Agilent sold them to Bruker for $38 million in 2010 after ...

Better growth decisions: early mover, fast follower or late follower?

PurposeThe article seeks to explain how companies seeking to fuel growth by entering new markets should analyze when it is wise to be an early mover, fast follower or late follower. Each option requires a different competitive strategy.Design/methodology/approachThe paper observes how three companies used early mover advantage to cement leadership in certain markets. It then suggests what approaches and industry circumstances allow fast followers and late followers in other settings to triumph.FindingsThe paper reveals that to chart potential strategies, managers should determine where their enterprise fits among three general types of business models: Solution shops like niche scientific instrument makers and customized software application developers create specially made offerings. They often dominate at the early stage of an industry. Value‐chain business models organize companies like automakers into systems that promote efficiency, consistency, market power, and access to sales channels. Facilitated‐network businesses like Facebook reap their competitive advantage from the size of their network.Practical implicationsEarly movers win only when a company can: preserve an early market lead stemming from barriers that later entrants will face; build resources and competencies that larger firms eventually could imitate but which they will prefer to acquire; avoid becoming locked into inappropriate technologies or business models before the market is deeply understood; and avoid incurring large upfront costs.Originality/valueOnce a company defines what new business it wants to be in, it can use this paper to help identify the advantages and drawbacks associated with entering the industry at different times.

David Pantalony. Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris

In Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris, David Pantalony achieves the difficult goal of balancing technical detail and historical narrative in his account of Rudolph Koenig and the nineteenth-century Parisian scientific instrument trade. The Parisian instrument making trade, particularly that of acoustical instruments, was at a high point in the mid-nineteenth century. Chief among scientific instrument makers was Rudolph Koenig (1832-1901), whose atelier at 30 Hautefeuille was at once an artisanal studio, a laboratory, a workshop and a showroom. The negotiations necessary for one building, and one person, to channel such different activities is one of the main themes of Pantalony’s book. Pantalony shows that Koenig’s atelier was central to disputes surrounding the creation of the “modern soundscape” (p. 170). Debates regarding analytic versus holistic conceptions of sound, “objective” visual versus “subjective” by-ear modes of perception and measurement, and experimental versus theoretical results are all prominent in the text, and all framed by the different, but not disparate, functions of Koenig’s atelier; the building acts as a multi-faceted lens through which Pantalony considers Koenig and his instruments in their artistic, intellectual, commercial and social contexts.

TAKING THE MEASURE OF THE NEW AGILENT

RETURN TO ISSUEPREVNewsNEXTTAKING THE MEASURE OF THE NEW AGILENTAs it completes the integration of Varian, the scientific instrument maker looks for GROWTH OPPORTUNITIESMARC S. REISCHView Author Information C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAUCite this: Chem. Eng. News 2010, 88, 34, 19–22Publication Date (Print):August 23, 2010Publication History Published online27 March 2011Published inissue 23 August 2010https://doi.org/10.1021/cen-v088n034.p019Copyright © 2010 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYArticle Views9Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (1009 KB) Get e-Alerts

‘Een extra fraai Octant in zyn kas’ uit de verzameling van een achttiende-eeuwse Amsterdamse regent

‘A very fine Octant’ from the collection of an eighteenth-century Amsterdam regent The Utrecht University Museum owns an octant made by Jonathan Sisson, an eighteenth-century London scientific instrument maker. The device was acquired in 1776 by Utrecht University at the auction sale of the instrument collection of Gerard Aernout Hasselaer, an Amsterdam regent, who held important posts at Dutch admiralties and the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East-India Company (VOC). The octant had been invented in 1731 by John Hadley, a vice-president of the Royal Society of London. Sisson made one of the first copies, which was put at the test at sea the following year. This try out proved to be a success, and octants soon replaced older instruments for measurements of the altitude of celestial bodies above the horizon at sea. The Dutch Republic was one of the first countries outside Britain where the octant was introduced. Among others, this introduction was stimulated by contacts between scientific instrument makers in both countries. In 1735 for instance, the Leiden instrument maker Jan van Musschenbroek was the first Dutchman to sell octants. It is known that he had business contacts with Sisson. In 1737 the octant was used for the first time on the Dutch vessel Teijlingen of the Amsterdam Admiralty. These developments occurred at a time that officials in the Dutch Republic became increasingly aware that the knowledge and practice of navigation on Dutch ships lay well behind those used at British ships. Dutch seamen and scholars drew up reports, pointing at the lagging of knowledge, and among others recommended the use of octants. These recommendations soon led to improvements, such as the founding of a navigational school in Amsterdam and the publication of a Dutch manual on its ships. Then these instruments were bought from Van Musschenbroek. Three years later the Company purchased octants from Benjamin Ayres, a former apprentice and brother-in- law of Sisson, working in Amsterdam since 1743. VOC governor Hasselaer played a stimulating role in this process of navigational improvements, being also the official representative of Prince William IV in three Dutch Admiralties. Hasselaer’s instrument collection reflects his interest, containing octants by both Sisson and Ayres. Sisson’s copy is particularly interesting because it has a number of technical devices, which are not found on contemporary octants. It has a brass frame with a wooden handle on the back, and two on either side for steadying the heavy instrument, a rack and pinion for slow-motion movement of the index arm, different types of adjustment for the mirrors, and a sight tube as well as a sight-vane. These devices are only found on octants by Sissons’s pupil Ayres, and on instruments made by others from the 1750s onwards. It is unlikely that Sisson’s example was intended for use at sea, for it was too heavy and probably also too expensive. Technically the instrument was well ahead of its time, suggesting that it was made specially for Hasselaer, perhaps at a time when the Company was contemplating the adoption of octants for its ships.

An infuriating geniusAnita McConnell, Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800): London's leading scientific instrument maker . Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, 2007. pp. 340, £60.00 (hardback). ISBN 978-0-7546-6136-8.

Anita McConnell, Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800): London's leading scientific instrument maker . Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, 2007. pp. 340, £60.00 (hardback). ISBN 978-0-7546-6136-8. Scientific instrument makers are rarely afforded the limelight by historians. Yet, as Martin Rees's foreword

Early use of the Scott‐Koenig phonautograph for documenting performance

Acoustics in the 1850s combined listening, observation and notation. This was “real‐time”, catching any phenomenon as it appeared. If it was repeatable, one could prepare for it. Continuous data rather than observation data enabled a very different analysis from observation and notebooks. Édouard‐Léon Scott's invention of the phonautograph enabled this. A surface moved below a stylus that was vibrated by sound in air. Originally a blackened glass plate, the scientific instrument maker Rudolph Koenig contributed by devising a very long axis representing time, because now blackened paper was wrapped around a cylinder on a threaded shaft. A two‐dimensional representation of the individual vibrations was obtained. Scott both deposited a sealed letter with the Paris Academy of Sciences in January, 1857 and filed a patent application in April, 1857. Later he deposited a further sealed letter and in 1859 he filed an application for patent of addition. Following the thoughts expressed and documented in his manuscripts here analyzed in context and comparing with Koenig's production it is feasible to see how they were dependent on each other, although they had different purposes in mind. The paper concentrates on Scott's interests in performance, and a number of original tracings are discussed.

By ‘the light of his own mind’: The story of James Ferguson, astronomer

James Ferguson, the self-taught astronomer, scientific instrument maker, author and lecturer was a remarkable 18th century figure. This paper traces his life from humble origins as a shepherd boy in Banffshire, Scotland. There he observed the stars and planets by night and conjectured on the mechanics of the heavens. He taught himself to make and repair clocks and his outstanding talent as a portraitist enabled him to earn a living while he invented scientific instruments. He eventually came to London where he continued to design instruments and globes and commenced his career as lecturer and author. His later years as an esteemed recipient of a royal pension from King George III brought him Fellowship of the Royal Society with extraordinary provisions, and contact with Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson and many other leading figures of his day.