The History of Your Favourite Lab Equipment

You use them in the lab every day, but have you ever stopped and wondered how these products were invented? In today’s blog we investigate the intriguing history of some of your favourite pieces of scientific equipment.

The Centrifuge 

Centrifuges offer an efficient means of preparing and separating samples of different densities and viscosities by placing a tube in a rotor and spinning it at a defined speed. This form of density-driven preparation dates to the 1400s when dairy farmers would use hand powered milk separators to separate cream from milk. In 1864, the dairy centrifuge was mechanised by Antonin Prandtl, but it was only in 1869 that Friedrich Miescher became the first scientist to use a centrifuge in a lab. Miescher successfully isolated nucleic acids from the nuclei of white blood cells, a discovery which served as an important development in the discovery of DNA inheritance. 

Magnetic S

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