Historical Scientific Instruments

A visit to Harvard University’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments brings together two devices that show how scientists once made difficult phenomena tangible. The first is a black, oxidized uranium cube from the German nuclear-reactor project of World War II, now held at Harvard. The Germans tried to build a reactor by suspending uranium cubes in heavy water, but lacked enough material to achieve a chain reaction. Like the more successful Chicago reactor built by Fermi and colleagues, the design depended on arranging natural, unenriched uranium alongside a neutron moderator. The cube’s path through postwar Europe and its connection to the novel D: Heavy Water give the object a personal as well as historical significance; its extraordinary density is another striking feature.

The second instrument, a partially incomplete Koenig Analyzer, made the components of sound visible. Eight gas-fed brass spheres acted as resonators, each tuned to a different frequency. When exposed to the same sound, spheres corresponding to prominent frequencies resonated more strongly, making their flames larger. A rotating, mirror-covered Wheatstone device helped observers compare the flames and see their relative intensity. The analyzer demonstrated that complex sounds are combinations of simpler frequencies, turning an abstract principle of acoustics into an observable display. It would have been familiar to Abbé Zéphirin Carrière, an acoustics expert discussed in Stephenson’s earlier writing. Together, the objects reveal how scientific instruments can embody both practical experiments and powerful ways of explaining ideas.