Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15234

    Device to preserve juices of plants and fruits with the aid of an airpump

    Date
    30 June 1686
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p3
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 186mm
    width (page): 146mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Figure showing Denis Papin's design of an apparatus to preserve the juices of fruits and plants with the aid of an airpump. AA is the glass vessel containing the juice to be preserved. BB is a cover that fits exactly the aperture of the glass vessel, held up by a soft lead piece, CC. AA is placed in a larger vessel DD full of water, with a lid EE that fits DD snugly with a pipe FF that is connected to the airpump. A brass wire GG is placed through the pipe FF, to push down the lid BB (CC will give way easily) when the air is extracted. DD is placed in a bucket full of water and the cock at HH can let water into DD to fill it up so that no air gets into AA. In this way, the contents of the vessel can be sealed off without air.

    This was shown to the Royal Society on 20 June 1686 and printed in Papin's A continuation of the new digester of bones (1687).
    Transcription
    Having found by experience that one may with great advantage preserve juice of plants, fruits, and severall other things by boiling and keeping them in vacuo: and seeing it is necessary for that purpose to shut the emptyd receivers so that they may be taken away from the engine without giving any access to the outward air.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 30 June 1686, ‘A paper of Dr. Papin was read, shewing his contrivance of a ready way of exhausting a vessel, and keeping the vacuum, as long as he pleased; which he proposed as what might be of considerable use in the preservation of juice of plants, fruits, and the like’ (Birch 4:493).

    The account is registered at RBO/6/324-35, with the legend, but without the image.

    Printed in Denis Papin, A continuation of the new digester of bones (London: J. Streater, 1687), fig. 16, pp. 81-82.
    Related fellows
    Denis Papin (1647, French) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
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