Science Art: The Turney Vario Variable Condenser, 1913.

19 August 2024 grant Featured, Science Art 0

Scientific illustration of an electronic object that looks a little licke a pressure cooker with a cutaway side and some sort of an inditcator needle on the front. It's resting on a square stand with four tiny legs.
Scientific illustration of an electronic object that looks a little licke a pressure cooker with a cutaway side and some sort of an inditcator needle on the front. It's resting on a square stand with four tiny legs.

This is from a photographically illustrated advertisement in Hugo Gernsback’s magazine The Electrical Experimenter.

The description of this item is as follows:

For extreme measurements such as WAVE METERS, REGENERATIVE CIRCUITS and the like this Condenser has no equal. It is seven complete Condensers in one. It is especially valuable as a grid circuit Condenser. Owing to the sky rocket prices in material and labor we were obliged to increase the price of this instrument to $10. Get our new catalog, it tells all about it.

It was made by the Eugene T. Turney company and advertised next to a Constant Amplitude Test Buzzer. I found it while browsing the old magazine here, on archive.org. It weighed around 3 pounds, and I have no idea how I’d connect this to a circuit. Seems pretty solid, though.