The Market and Its Influences

Abstract

The booming market for scientific instruments in the 1860 s developed from two streams of science education – augmenting and updating of physical cabinets across Europe and North America, and the growth of student laboratories. Two Koenig artifacts derive from these contexts. One, a Galton whistle from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), comes from the first attempts in the United States to build student laboratories in the late 1860 s. Like other Koenig surviving apparatus at MIT, it shows heavy use and is painted with the original inventory number from the shelves of the laboratory. Another apparatus from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, the manometric apparatus for comparing two sounds using manometric organ pipes, tells the story of a different teaching environment.