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Updated: June 12, 2025
A solid board, some 10-1/2 by 13-1/2 inches, and 1 inch thick, forms the base of the apparatus. In this, at a distance of some 6 inches, two holes are drilled, into which are inserted pegs, 3-1/2 inches long, and sharpened at their top edges to a fine knife-edge. This constitutes the fulcrum the upper board resting on these knife-edges, and being unevenly balanced on them.
It was of an intense cobalt blue, a color to be seen only in these glacial bodies of water, deep and rich as the mantle of a merchant of Tyre. White ice floated in it. The savage fierce granite needles and knife-edges of the mountain crest hemmed it about. But this was temporizing, and we knew it.
Within the upright is a mechanism, controlled by a knob at the front of the balance case, which is so arranged as to raise the entire beam slightly above the level at which the knife-edges are in contact with the agate plates.
For the same reason the beam should never be left upon its knife-edges, nor should weights be removed from or placed on the pans without supporting the beam, except in the case of the small fractional weights.
The upper board, resting on these edges, is some 19 inches long by 13 inches broad at the lower end, and 10 inches broad at the upper end. It is here that a groove is cut, and, 7-1/2 inches from the broad end of the board, two pointed grooves are also cut, which allow the board to rest nicely upon the knife-edges of the two pegs below it.
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