stepstool

What’s the story here? (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• Fraser Pettigrew said:

  How to make gin at home?

• Eugene Carlson said:

  A prototype of some test version of refinery technology?

• Jon (LOC P&P) said:

  We recently found some old catalog cards for Harris & Ewing that had a caption for this photo. The caption for this photo should be: “UNCLE SAM HAS TURNED DISTILLER” In the campaign to outwit bootleggers and at the same times develop a non-poisonous denaturant for alcohol, the Prohibition Bureau has set up a modern copper still of miniature “commercial” proportions in the laboratory atop the United States Treasury building in Washington, to give severe practical tests to all tentative formulae. The business of this new still is do the same thing the bootlegger does--take the poison out of denatured alcohol but at the same time make it disagreeable to the taste. G.F. Beyer, chief chemist of the Prohibition Unit, is shown in the picture."