Description

This item is a piece of camera equipment with a photographic plate holder on one side and an adjustable metal holder on the other.

This instrument, known as a precession camera, was used to take x-ray diffraction pictures of a crystal. MIT professor Martin Buerger first conceived of it in 1937, and working with his machinist, Charles Supper, the two men collaborated on its manufacture in the early 1940s. The Buerger-type mechanical precession camera became the standard instrument for creating x-ray diffraction images until the 1980s.

Additional Information

See Martin J. Buerger, The Procession Method of Crystallography (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964)