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Record Details

Copper Tube Sealed with Goldbeater's Skin, by H.G.J. Moseley, Manchester/Oxford, c.1913

Object is on display.
Inventory Number: 30649
Object Type:
Persons: Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (User)
Date Created: c. 1913
Place Created: Oxford England United Kingdom Europe
Accession Number: 1935-8
Brief Description: This piece of apparatus was constructed and used by Henry Moseley, first at Manchester in 1913 and then at Oxford from November 1913 to the summer of 1914. He studied chemical samples using X-ray spectroscopy and hence determine their atomic number. The results were published in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ in 1913 and 1914.

Tube sealed with 'goldbeater's skin', a parchment made from the outer membrane of a calf’s intestine traditionally used in the process of making gold leaf by beating. Goldbeater’s skin was used for the gas bags in airships until after World War One. Moseley used a window of goldbeater’s skin to separate the generating tube from the spectrometer in the definitive setup of his apparatus used in Manchester in late 1913 and in Oxford from November 1913 through to the summer of 1914.

See attached narrative 'Henry 'Harry' Moseley and his experiments' for further details.
Provenance: Used by H.G.J. Moseley at the Electrical Laboratory, Oxford
Collection Group:
Material(s): Copper alloy
paper
plastic?
Dimensions:
Height Width Depth Diameter Unit
32 mm

Narratives

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