A SCIENTIFIC WONDER.
What is claimed to be the most refined measuring apparatus in existence, an initruraent wn.ch measures one billionth part of an inch, or a millionth of a degree Fahrenheit, is on exhibition at the Bel) Telephone Laboratories in New York. Tire inventor, Mr P. P. CiofE. says that the apparatus was constructed to measure the minute construction and expansion which wires of different composition undergo when they are magnetised, and is approximately a hundred times more sensitive than the most delicate instrument hitherto in use. A change of temperature of even a thousandth part of a degree Fahrenheit is sufficient to cause a spot of light to race across the scale (says a (Reuter's message,. Some 80 years ago Sir Joseph Whitworth, to whom the world owes the "Surface Plate," for producing true plane surfaces, the standardisation of screw threads and other epoch-making inventions, built a measuring machine capable of gauging _to limits of one millionth of an inch. So sensitive is this instrument, vvh.cb i; still in existence, that it would register the increase in size by a small piece of steel •when held in the hand for a second or two. -
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 20282, 15 December 1927, Page 17
Word Count
196A SCIENTIFIC WONDER. Otago Daily Times, Issue 20282, 15 December 1927, Page 17
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