An American Physiologist Abroad - continued...

5. Accumulating Instruments and probing tacit knowledge

Crucial for the ideal laboratory was that it have the best, most reliable and most accurate equipment and apparatus. Benedict had excellent technical skills. By the time he was appointed director of the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory, he had already proven his ability to build complex and precise apparatus for metabolism research and to successfully use it in experiments.

A selection of gas-washing bottles, taken from: Bauer, Felix. 1912. Laboratoriums-Apparate- und Utensilien. Hamburg, p. 195

His tours of European physiology laboratories enabled him to familiarize himself with the various kinds of apparatus that he would not have had the opportunity to see in the United States. He could find out what apparatus and techniques had proven reliable in experiment and which ones were new and in the testing stage, inspect a variety of minor equipment such as stoppers, flasks and thermometers, and consider what equipment and apparatus could be useful for his own purposes, find out who made it, and, if the price was right, order it for his own laboratory.