determining

Identified! [Testing airplane lenses used in map making at the U.S. Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.] (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• 13 older comments, and then…
• oldoinyo said:

  Some kind of injection array for a particle accelerator or other physics experiment?

• stxvi said:

  Close Clark, but I'd say it's a spectroscope or spectrometer -- possible a prototype for a calutron mass separator for radionuclides... The it could be from the astronomy department of a university used for studying the spectra of stars & nebulae.

• Arlen Breiholz said:

  I agree that it seems to be a spectrometer. Note the light bulb at the right rear of the apparatus.

• Ross said:

  This one raises a whole lot of questions. It looks to me like each tube ends in a light bulb, a diffuser, and a rotating shutter. Are all the rotating shutters connected to a drive shaft, to operate in sync, driven by the motor and chain coming up from below? Are the seven tubes optics to collimate the light sources? There seem to be some spare ones at the far left. Why seven? What would you want to illuminate with a pulsating light source? The man seems to be holding a lens, so my guess is that the black apparatus with the gears is where the results would be photographed or filmed. There's a rectangular gate (at the focal plane?) with a strange-shaped mask inside. I think the small telescope-like device at the left end could be a critical focusing magnifier.

• swanq said:

  I think this is probably at the National Bureau of Standards. See www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/npcc.15853/?co=npco for a room with the same trim on the walls including brickwork below the lower stripe.