Major Instruments of Science and their Applications to Chemistry The Electron Microscope Scientific Instruments

Abstract

AT a luncheon of the Physical Society in Cambridge shortly before his death, Sir J. J. Thomson commented whimsically on the equipment needed in a present-day physical research laboratory. When he became Cavendish professor in 1885, he said, his annual allowance for equipment was never more than a few hundred pounds, but “nowadays they want all of that for a new magnet”. It is indeed a commonplace that a very great part of present-day research in physics, and increasingly also in chemistry, relies on the use of elaborate equipment which, even had it been available, would have been quite beyond the means of university laboratories a couple of generations ago, when glass and string and sealing-wax, and silk-covered wire and adequate primary batteries, gave contemporary genius much of the material help it needed in exploring the unknown.

Major Instruments of Science and their Applications to Chemistry

Edited by R. E. Burk Oliver Grummitt. (Frontiers in Chemistry, Vol. 4: Published under the auspices of Western Reserve University.) Pp. xii + 151. (New York: Interscience Publishers, Inc., 1945.) 3.50 dollars.

The Electron Microscope

Its Development, Present Performance and Future Possibilities. By Dr. D. Gabor. (Electronic Engineering Technical Monographs.) Pp. 104. (London: Hulton Press, Ltd., n.d.) 4s. 6d. net.

Scientific Instruments

Described by specialists under the Editorship of Herbert J. Cooper. Pp. 293. (London: Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications, 1946.) 25s. net.