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Identified! [[Dr. B.L. Taylor (left) and Dr. Walter A. Rath (right), dentists, using a dental x-ray to examine the cores of golf balls to see if they are centered] (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• 6 older comments, and then…
• KenjiB_48 said:

  Looks like an early durometer - drops a ball onto a piece of material with high precision??.

• swanq said:

  www.gardco.com/pages/hardness/OSoperatingstands.cfm shows examples modern examples of what KenjiB_48 has in mind.

• Ross said:

  The fact that they're dressed like dentists seems like a clue. Look at the high resolution TIFF and the gadget certainly may be a glass X-ray tube. The golf ball is sitting on a packet wrapped in opaque paper—so my guess is that there's a film or a plate wrapped inside it to record an image of the golf ball innards.

• KenjiB_48 said:

  Miller-Urey experiment?

• swanq said:

  Scarsdale Inquirer, Number 36, 2 August 1924 news.hrvh.org/veridian/cgi-bin/senylrc?a=d&d=scarsdal... notes, among many applications of X-rays, use for checking that the core of a golf ball is dead centered. New Smyrna Daily News from New Smyrna, Florida · May 2, 1924, Page 3 www.newspapers.com/newspage/15302976/ mentions such use. www.golfwrx.com/247385/inside-titleists-golf-ball-facilit... suggests that it was a few years later (early 1930s) that Titleist started using X-rays in the production line.