Skip to main content
  • COVID Information
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • News and Press
    • Careers and Fellowships
    • Get in Touch
    • Join Our Mailing List
  • Visit
    • Event Calendar
    • Program Series
    • Awards
    • Conferences and Symposia
    • Directions
    • Accessibility
  • Host an Event
    • Rooms and Facility
    • Amenities
    • Floor Plans
  • Support
    • Give Now
    • Ways to Give
    • Add to Our Collections
    • Our Giving Community
  • Give Now
  • Research
    • Fellowships
    • Othmer Library
    • Online Catalog
    • Research Centers
    • Research Activities
  • Collections
    • Digital Collections
    • Rare Books
    • Modern Books and Journals
    • Oral Histories
    • Archives
    • Photographs
    • Fine Art
    • Objects
    • Collections Blog
    • Search Collections
  • Distillations
    • Innate
    • Water
    • Podcasts
    • Video
    • About Distillations
  • Museum
    • On View
    • Digital Exhibitions
    • Programs & Activities
    • Past Exhibitions
    • Plan Your Trip
  • Learn
    • Scientific Biographies
    • Try This @ Home
    • Women in Science
    • Rare Earth Elements
    • National History Day
    • Virtual Chemistry
    • Science Matters
    • Zoom Backgrounds
    • #ColorOurCollections
mobile logo
  • COVID Information
  • Visit
    • Museum
    • Othmer Library
    • Getting Here
    +
  • Event Calendar
    • Program Series
    • Awards
    • Conferences & Symposia
    +
  • Learn
    • Historical Biographies
    • Science Matters
    +
  • Distillations
    • Podcast
    • Video
    • Subscribe
    +
  • Research
    • Othmer Library
    • Fellowships
    • Research Centers
    +
  • Collections
  • Facility Rentals
    • Amenities
    • Rooms and Facility
    +
  • Support Our Mission
  • About
    • News & Press
    • Career & Fellowship Opportunities
    • Staff Directory
    • Join Our Mailing List
    +

Select a search area

Andrew Mangravite

More From the Author

Visual Evidence

Distillations Article

Freelance inventor, litigious chemist, and explosives expert—the many lives of Walter O. Snelling.

Magical Thinking

Distillations Article

What happened to physics in Nazi Germany?

Up in the Air

Distillations Article

Some of the greatest technological achievements from the 18th through the 20th century required the public to look up—from the first balloon flights of the Montgolfier brothers to the birth of the ocean-crossing behemoths built by Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin.

Meeting the Miner’s Friend

Distillations Article

Art and advertising have always been bed fellows. Advertising art must be quickly comprehensible to its audience and make an immediate impact, even when the object being advertised makes its own bang.

Cellophane Comes to Buffalo

Distillations Article

In 1905, in France, chemist Jacques Brandenberger spilled wine on a tablecloth and wished for a material that could be wiped clean with a wet cloth. Swiss-born Brandenberger spent the next several years perfecting a transparent, moisture-repellent film he named cellophane.

A Better Pill

Distillations Article

Archives place history at our fingertips, but sometimes that history needs a little interpretation. Take the records of early pharmaceutical company William H. Rorer, which point to a lesson in pharmacy and good government.

Factory to Farm

Distillations Article

In 1944 Henry Morgenthau, Jr., President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury, had a vision. He saw postwar Germany as a vast farm—an agrarian state in which all heavy industry would be strictly forbidden and all advanced technologies effectively banished.

Money Man

Distillations Article

For more than 30 years chemist James Curtis Booth successfully oversaw quality and minimized waste at the U.S. Mint. Then three bars of silver bullion disappeared.

Hot Pursuit

Distillations Article

At the end of World War II chemist Charles Phelps Smyth chased down German nuclear scientists and the equipment they left behind.

Sweet Harmony

Distillations Article

Wilhelm Ostwald, winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on catalysis and an accomplished “Sunday painter,” conducted extensive research into the nature of color. His resulting aesthetic provided a stark contrast to the emerging artistic movements of the early 20th century.

The Dream in the Machine

Distillations Article

Rudolph Pariser uses one of the earliest computers to calculate the molecular structure of Dacron.

  • Contact Us
  • Careers
  • Press
  • Mailing List
Headquarters
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215.925.2222
Directions
Museum Hours
West Coast
415.798.2104
Get in Touch
Boston/Cambridge
617.500.8668
Get in Touch
Europe
Maison de la Chimie
28, Rue Saint-Dominique
75007 Paris
France
Get in Touch
© 2023 Science History Institute | Privacy Policy | Accessibility

The Science History Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the U.S. under EIN: 22-2817365.