Titchener's Photo Album - continued...

Titchener's album contains photographs and hand written descriptions from the earliest days of instruments made especially for psychological research. Such instruments were often borrowed from experimental physiology, but increasingly, they came from psychological research itself. The album gives very rare photographs rather than line engravings, some of which are unique representations of instruments no longer in existence.

The remainder of this Essay presents the instrument makers whose photographs and descriptions were included in this album:

C. A. Francis, Worcester Massachusetts, USA

Francis supplied instruments to the psychological laboratory at Clark University and was quite likely Edmund C. Sanford's departmental mechanician. G. Stanley Hall, though president of the University, was also involved in the laboratory. I know of no catalogue or price list from this maker.

Francis's blueprint photography of his model of Wheatstone's mirror stereoscope made for the psychological laboratory at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

Photographs of the following instruments by Francis were included in Titchener's album:

• Endless paper kymographion, for 10-inch paper, compound model
• Endless paper kymographion, for 10-inch paper, compound model
• Pendulum chronoscope, Fitz model (top) and Endless paper kymographion, 8 inch roll (bottom)
• Stereoscope (see also above)
• Temperature stimulators
• Weighted, adjustable tuning fork on resonator base
• Tuning fork on resonator base
• Multiple sound pendulum (Sanford) (front view)
• Multiple sound pendulum (Sanford) (back view)

Elmer Willyoung, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Willyoung had been an employee of James W. Queen, an instrument maker and importer located in Philadelphia. Willyoung set up a company of his own in the early 1890s. He was well known for his electrical measuring devices. He began making instruments for psychology and physiology in 1895. His first catalogue is the Price List of Psychological and Physiological Instruments and Apparatus. Another of his early catalogues, the Illustrated Price List of Psychological Apparatus, was based on the designs of Yale psychologist E. W. Scripture and supplied instruments described in Scripture's Thinking, Feeling and Doing (1895).

Titchener's spinning table for experiments on dizziness

Beginning in 1896, Willyoung distributed his catalogues through James G. Biddle in Philadelphia (see Biddle's Abridged Catalogue of Electrical Measuring Instruments and other Scientific Apparatus and his Supplementary Catalogue of Psychological and Physiogogical Apparatus). According to Biddle's catalogue New Apparatus at Special Prices, Willyoung's firm was sold to Morris E. Leeds in 1899. Leeds, "wishing to start fresh," sold off the remaining stock through Biddle.
Willyoung's catalogues contained simple outline drawings as well as sophisticated line engravings. The image sent to Titchener was a photograph, however, a shot of the spinning table designed by Titchener for the study of dizziness and disorientation (see also above).