Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14557

    Comparative weighing scale

    Date
    16 January 1683
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p102
    Dimensions
    height (page): 375mm
    width (page): 239mm
    Subject
    Physics
       > Mechanics
    Content object
    Description
    Robert Hooke's design of scales placed on cross beams. Hooke produced a model at the meeting on 16 January 1684, but it was judged as inaccurate.

    This image is copied from RBO/6/141.
    Transcription
    I shewed a New Instrument I had invented by which immediately and without any trouble the Comparative weights of any two body's given might be found if at least the Beam were big enough to bear them, or any Aliquot or Aliquant part of any ponderable body.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Hooke was absent at the beginning of the meeting on 16 January 1684, but it seems that he attended later, as it is recorded that he ‘shewed a way how to give the proportions of two weights one to another, the apparatus being not designed for an accurate trial’ (Birch 4:250).

    The paper with the figure are printed in Robert Hooke, Philosophical Experiments and Observations, ed. by W. Derham (london: 1726), pp. 121-22.
    Related fellows
    Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703, British) , Natural philosopher
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