去年秋天，北卡罗来纳州加纳的Slominski和Lawton家族在偏远的国家海滨偏远地区度假，当时他们注意到冲浪中的小物体在冲浪。他们收集了一些物品，大约三十分钟的同一物品示例继续浮动。他们不知道自己是什么，而是将收集限制在大约15件上。收集的物品是精致的玻璃管，顶部有一个细管，其中包含一个刻度的纸秤，中间有一个较大的空气室，底部的一个小灯泡装满了小铅颗粒，由棉塞固定在适当的位置。。
在恢复期间,脆弱的压裂项目之一tured and from it they recovered a paper scale with the words “Sea Water G. Tagliabue New York.” Despite seeing what they described as a “hundreds” of the items in the surf, when they walked down the beach to see how many had washed ashore they couldn’t find anything—no complete pieces, no broken glass, no loose paper scales…nothing. It was as if the bobbing items had simply vanished into thin air.
They showed the items to volunteers and staff working at Cape Lookout and were told that cargo and other items from the hundreds of shipwrecks that surround Cape Lookout regularly washes up on area beaches. While storms or rough seas may wash heavier cargo from the wrecks, sometimes it’s the decomposition of the ship structure or crates within it that allows trapped items to escape.
Once home, Mark Slominski began trying to identify the items. After a little research he was pretty sure what the family had recovered was some form of hydrometer, but he wasn’t sure. He contacted several naval historians to try and gain additional insight into the instrument, but they couldn’t provide any assistance.
Eventually, Mark contacted the Scientific Instrument Society and joined the RETE mailing list (a mailing list devoted to the history of scientific instruments) operated by the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford. After posting a query to the list serve, members Sara Schechner (David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard) and researcher Julian Holland suggested he contact the Mariners’ Museum for additional assistance. In late January, Mark’s request for help reached me. Images of the items and the word “sea water” on the paper scale immediately told me the instruments were most likely salinometers, a type of hydrometer that’s specifically designed to measure the amount of salt in a marine steam engine boiler.
I was aided by the fact that we have a number of fragmentary instruments recovered from the engine room of the USSMonitor在2002年。尽管被打破了Monitor仪器幸存下来，至少有一种表明它是与Slominski和Lawton家族所追回的工具：纽约的Giuseppe Tagliabue（1812-1878）。
Confusing the situation was the fact that Tagliabue marked one of the scales with the words “Sea Water Hydrometer,” while one recovered by the family was marked “Salinometer for Sea Water” and yet another was simply marked “Sea Water.” Holy moly dude—could you have been a little more consistent???
当然，这提出了问题：是盐度计还是比重计？您如何分辨这两种乐器之间的区别？“海水比重计”是否与“海水盐度计”不同，还是姓名却有所不同，但用于相同的活动？我没有任何线索。
你们认识我，我绝对不是让睡狗撒谎的人。回答现在我脑海中浮出水面的所有问题，这完全是一种痴迷。I am happy to say, that after reading a bit about marine steam engines and boilers I think I have finally sorted things out—at least enough to visually tell the difference between a hydrometer and salinometer (which is technically still a hydrometer but let’s ignore that!).
水及其旨在测量液体的比重，因此它们携带均匀逐渐的刻度，有助于确定液体的密度。由于显然有大约数十亿种不同类型的液体，因此有许多不同类型的比重计。测量牛奶纯度的比重计被称为乳酸。测量液体酒精强度的比重计称为酒精计。测量酸的比重的比重计为酸度计。你明白了。有一个缺点，使用比重计测量盐含量，也就是说，您还必须有一个晴雨表来确定大气压力。为了解决这个问题，创建了两种仪器的组合：盐度计。
Salinometers are specifically designed to tell a marine engineer the portion of salt in his boiler water. Why do they need to know this? Well, too much salt means it takes more fuel to bring the water to a boil. It also leads to scaling inside the boiler which could cause the boiler to fail thanks to overheating (it’s more technical than that but that’s the gist of it). The scale inside a salinometer is set for the range of boiling points for salt water (190°F to 210°F) with additional graduations for 1/32, 2/32, 3/32, etc. to show the portion of salt in the water. Those graduations tells the engineer when it’s time to replace too-salty water with less-salty water. The scale is marked “blow” which means it’s time for the engineer to open the valves that allow the steam inside the boiler to “blow off” the salty water so fresher water can be drawn in.
Learning all this helped me understand why identical instruments seem to have multiple terms describing them. Tagliabue’s identification of the instrument in the USSMonitorcollection as a “sea water hydrometer” is actually a salinometer. Likewise, the fragmentary scale that only has the word “water” remaining—but shows the 190°F to 210°F temperature scales is also a salinometer.
在整理出所有这些问题之后，我很高兴地说，Slominski和Lawton的家庭慷慨地捐赠了他们恢复的盐计，而是其中的两个盐度表，并从破碎的乐器中捐出了零散的纸秤。这种奇妙的捐款为我们提供了船上使用的最早形式的盐仪之一的例子。这对我们的访客也很棒，因为它将让我们在碎片仪器旁边展示一个完整的例子，这将使他们对整个乐器的样子有更好的了解。
对于Slominski和Lawton的家庭而言，他们可以陶醉于这样一个事实，即他们能够从破坏中节省如此多的精致和稀有的乐器（从约会和制造商的方面），并知道由于他们的努力，他们将被保留为子孙后代的好处。