Projection Polariscope

Date: around 1880
Maker: Jules Duboscq
Place: France: Île-de-France, Paris
Dimensions: overall; polariscope: 16 1/8 in x 8 1/2 in x 3 1/8 in; 40.9575 cm x 21.59 cm x 7.9375 cm; overall; parts in box: 1 3/4 in x 3 1/2 in x 11 5/8 in; 4.445 cm x 8.89 cm x 29.5275 cm
Museum: National Museum of American History
Credit line: U.S. Military Academy

J. B. F. Soleil presented a complex instrument to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1839, boasting that it would produce all the experiments of diffraction and interference that might be included in a physics class of the period. This example seems to be a later form of that device. The “J. & A. Duboscq à Paris” inscription refers to Jules Duboscq and his son-in-law, Albert, who were in business together in the years 1879-1882.

Ref: P. A. Daguin, Traité Élémentaire de Physique (Paris, 1862), vol. 4, p. 570.

Notice in Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciènce 8 (1839): 918.

The museum's own record (Smithsonian, National Museum of American History)

Projection Polariscope

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