Object number
65/33
Creator
Description
This is a four sided slide rule for use in the malting and brewing trades. This rule is inscribed with 'T. Eley Nov. 9th 1807' with 'Dring & Fage Makers no 248 Todey Street London' maker's stamp.
Archival history
MERL ‘Handwritten accession’ form (Institute Of Agricultural History) - ‘SLIDE RULE // 65/33 // PROCESSING grain malt // Donation, Rev. S. F. M. Dauncey, ‘Avonmead’, Pewsey, Wilshire. // Description // Wooden slide rule with four faces, each with a sliding section. Inscibed ‘T.Eley Nov. 9th 1807’ (or 1801?) under one slide. Maker’s stamp: ‘Dring & Fage Makers No248 Todey Street London’. Various calculating marks stamped on the reverse of the sliding sections. // Dimensions // 9 inches long, 1 ⅟10 inches wide, ¾ inch deep. // Associated information // This is a slide rule for use in the malting and brewing trades. Slide rules being based on fixed ratios, there are various general applications such as converting temperatures in Fahrenheit to Centigrade measure, working out wage rates, and so on. The specifically brewing uses are many, and are indicated by the various letters stamped on the rule. For example: S. St and S. Ly on the side faces. These are illaging measures used for checking the quantity of liquor in a cask after it has been in store. S. St means segment standing, S. Ly means segment lying, used respectively for casks stored upright and horizontal. The basic dimension of the cask, length or diameter, read against the appropriate scale gives the measure of liquor. // The front and back faces can be used for converting measurements in brewers’ pounds to specific gravity, converting quantities in bulk barrels to standard barrels (this won’t apply to this particular rule, however, as the standard barrel was introduced with the Beer Duty in 1880), and for estimating the barrels of beer to be obtained from a given quantity of malt. Lones in his articles gives this example: “To estimate the number of barrels output at 18 brewers’ pounds from 24 quarters of malt yielding 90lbs malt extract per quarter [pen drawing]”…Which doesn’t seem to work out on the scales on this rule! In malting the rule’s use is for reckoning the number of bushels or quarters of grain in the steeping cistern, couch, container (or diameter if a round vessel) and reading off against the appropriate multiplier enabling these figures to be converted into cubic measure. // The various figures stamped on the reverse of the slides give some of the basic ratios in malting and brewing. I don’t know what they all are. The one with scales marked ‘spheroid’ and ‘variety’ had applications in converting the measurements of the casks into a standard. This description is incomplete partly because my understanding of the workings of slide rules is hazy to say the least, and partly because the article by Lones, my basic source, describes a late 19th century ’18 inch gauging, illaging and reducing rule’, then common, on which the scales and marks are slightly different from this example. // There were several makers of scientific instruments for brewers- see the Kelly’s Wine & Spirit Trades Directory 1902 in MERL. Most were in London. Another example was Joseph Long of Eastcheap whose advertisements appear in the trade press in the late 19th. Century giving illustration of various other slide rules- e.g. in Brewers’ Year Book of 1876.’
Production place
Greater London [region]
Object name
Associated subject
Associated person/institution
External document
- L:\MERL\Objects\JISC 2012\60 series negatives\60_9383.tif - High resolution image
