They were in the same folder, neither has any caption. They look to have been taken at about the same time but other than that my ignorance is complete:
I like this one even better than the first. Tubes, dials, something that looks like a little telescope–what more could you want?
I obviously need some old engineers to help out here.
Bonus: This is from last week.
If only they had known at the time that all they needed to add was a a high voltage traveling arc and the monster would have reanimated.
I was thinking the same thing!
In the first photo, the device on the very left in the center (vertically) is a National NC-57 shortwave receiver. These relatively simple receivers were produced from 1957-1960, which puts an “earliest” bound on the time of the photo. The device on the top right of the NC-57 is a BC221 or LM-series heterodyne frequency meter (most likely WWII surplus). The rest isn’t recognizable as commercial instruments. There was some radio frequency (RF) stuff being done here … most likely using frequencies in the HF radio spectrum.
I was wrong about the dates. That should be — 1947-1950 or so for the NC-57 receiver.
WOW! Thanks so much!
Of, course, being Rice, it could still be in use ten years later!
I agree that the first photo is likely some HF radio frequency setup. Second one seems to be chemical engineering, but it is interesting that there are a couple of bright light sources in the midst of the glassware, and there seems to be parts of reactor vessels, some with some wires connected. The box with knobs is likely just potentiometers, maybe in a decade configuration, but there are an awful lot of binding posts on the back for a decade box. I wonder if the “telescope ” is actually part of some spectroscopy setup. Mostly a mystery to me.
Hi Melissa! When I graduated in ’59 I remember that Rice had a computer that was dedicated to the latest technology. It was housed in its own small building. I never got to look inside, but I image it looked something like this!
Nice slide rule on top of the lab notebook.
When I was at HP, we called this kind of posed photo “Joe Test”. Typically had a short sleeve white shirt, tie, and was reaching out to touch an instrument. In a real lab, you spend nearly all of your time looking at the outputs instead of adjusting the equipment.