High Voltage Electron Microscope (HVEM) Million-Volt MicroscopeScience History Institute
Scientific instruments are tools used in the day-to-day work of making knowledge. But instrument makers can’t always anticipate how scientists will actually use their products. So sometimes instrument users stick on some extra labels to make their work easier.
Maybe it’s a warning that helps everyone work more safely...
High Voltage Electron Microscope (HVEM) You have an unusually magnetic personality.Science History Institute
...or a joke to brighten someone’s day
Repair Card on a Beckman Model E Ultracentrifuge by Beckman Instruments, Inc.Science History Institute
Hints of unwritten processes
It’s easy to overlook these signs. But added labels help us see the many kinds of labor involved in science. This card attached to an ultracentrifuge reminds us of the repair and maintenance workers whose names never appear in research papers.
Taped-on messages also provide a glimpse of the intimate relationships that scientists develop with instruments as they work in the laboratory.
Buck Colony Counter (1930/1939)Science History Institute
Humor at work
Bacteriologists and milk safety inspectors during the 1930s used this Buck Colony Counter to watch bacteria reproduce. Noticing the voyeuristic quality of this work, someone added the “DIME-A-PEEK” label.
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Biochemists used this A-60 nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer during the 1960s and 1970s to tease apart the structure of complicated molecules. NMR spectrometry soon became an essential tool, but the A-60 was too expensive to put one in every lab.
Varian A-60 Proton NMR Console Varian A-60 Proton NMR Console (1961) by Varian Inc.Science History Institute
Operating instructions like this one hint at the troubles that resulted when chemists shared an instrument and learned to use it. What labels did users add that the original designers did not think were necessary?
Varian A-60 Proton NMR Console Varian A-60 Proton NMR Console (1961) by Varian Inc.Science History Institute
Apparently the A-60 could be an exasperating instrument
This joke warned users that the instrument was equipped with an “emotional crisis detector.” A later model, the T-60, was simplified for students and routine uses.
Elephants Have Wings (2014)Science History Institute
Electrospray wings for molecular elephants
John Fenn won a Nobel Prize in 2002 after his lab developed electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ES-MS), a novel method for identifying proteins. Fenn called proteins “molecular elephants,” since they were too heavy to measure using existing mass spec techniques in the 1970s.
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This is the first ES-MS instrument ever made
Fenn’s colleague Masamichi Yamashita built it using ingenuity and spare parts during the 1980s. What do you notice as you look at it?
Electro-spray Ionization Mass Spectrometer Control panel of Electro-spray Ionization Mass SpectrometerScience History Institute
Yamashita labeled the repurposed controls with tape, markers, and sticky notes. These labels guided graduate student Craig Whitehouse as he operated the instrument after Yamashita returned to his job at the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science in Japan.
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Liquid samples containing proteins were charged at high voltage, then sprayed through a vacuum chamber before being measured by a quadrupole mass spectrometer mounted on the top of the instrument.
Achtung Alles LookenPeepers (1980/1999)Science History Institute
John Fenn filed away things that made him laugh
This mischievous sign warned visitors not to touch instruments around the lab. The ersatz German recalls when German was a predominant language of science during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
This sign might be translated as:
ATTENTION
All Visitors!
This machine is not for poking with your fingers or grabbing with your hands. It is easy to snap the springs, blow the fuses, and pop the corks, causing it to spit sparks....
...It is not to be operated by idiots. Rubbernecking sightseers must keep their hands in their pockets, relax, and watch the blinking lights!!!
Kipp's ApparatusScience History Institute
How did this happen?
This is a Kipp’s apparatus, used to capture gases in the 1800s and early 1900s. When high school chemistry teacher Jeremy Wolf started his job, his grandmother Margaret Murray passed down this tool she’d used to prepare laboratory demonstrations when she taught chemistry herself.
Wolf thought it might stimulate his students’ curiosity, so he put it on display.
But not everyone recognized it as glassware for a chemistry lab. Some people thought it looked like it could be used to smoke marijuana.
Kipp's ApparatusScience History Institute
One day, the school principal noticed. “It kind of looks like something illicit,” he told Wolf. “Don’t worry,” Wolf replied. “It’s not a bong.”
Then a student sensibly suggested it needed a label. Wolf agreed. But the students did not write “Kipp’s Apparatus.”
Exxon Mass Spec CEC 21-103 Warning LabelScience History Institute
Do not remove
Jokes, warnings, and added labels reveal the unique histories of how individual instruments were used. They help us see the challenges of laboratory work that are left out of published research. So if you see something stuck on an old instrument, please don’t peel it off!
Isotopes from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Page 6 (December 1962) by Oak Ridge National LaboratoryScience History Institute
Written and Curated by Roger Turner
Edited by Jesse Smith
Photography by Jahna Auerbach, Emma Gothelf, Annabel Pinkney, and Roger Turner
Digital Design by Clare Hirai
Special thanks to Mike Marko
