ISASC Europe: Links

Links to websites of interest:

André Sol's site about Letter Scales - in Dutch (this gives the Dutch homepage)
Or to go directly to André's English homepage: try HERE
ISASC (America)'s official web-site
Excellent new Norman Biggs website - books on weights, many images, local verification marks in UK - a treasure trove of original research!
Coins and weights (and indeed coin-weights!) may be had from Galata Coins
Simmons Gallery runs regular postal auctions of weights & scales
Lots of information about English weights & measures
Thomas Allgeier's site about Stanton Instruments
An article in the Financial Times by an ex-Chairman of ISASC (Europe)(Janet Scarratt)
A visually stunning site belonging to the German Society for Metrology - beautiful photos, text is naturally in German!
A marvellous museum at a fascinating location in Central Germany
German scalemakers with 125 years of history
Australia has a strong connection with United Kingdom Weights and Measures - here's a sample item from the Powerhouse Museum collection in Sydney, featuring Captain Henry Kater, with further informative links and browsing
Herbert's, the renowned English scale manufacturer which in 2010 celebrated 250 years in business, an updated link to their dedicated history project website
New Zealand museums have a collective site with a good search engine - try 'weights' or 'bullion scales' for pictures and text of some stunning artefacts of folk and colonial history
Here's a live listing of salerooms in the UK – good for buyers and sellers too. It's especially a good guide to valuing antiques to see what they fetched at a recent auction!
This is an auction house in Gloucestershire England who have held several successful auctions featuring weights and measures items.
A great Russian website showing the Volgograd Museum of Scales and Weights, associated with a major scale firm in Central Southern Russia. In Cyrillic script in Russian, with other languages available. Some very good photos of exotic and rare items!
The South East Midlands Auction house who handled the disposal of important collections of weights and scales. Includes an archived list of hammer prices.
Detailed and scholarly information on pharmacy and associated weighing practices from an Australian enthusiast and expert - it includes an illustrated catalogue of British apothecary weights.
A Collectors Weekly with illustrations of scales and requests for information - useful to separate out the rare from the merely bizarre.
A knowledge hub based on the UK colour magazine publication The Searcher with news and features from the world of metal-detecting.
A valuable archive on precision balances and other scales from Germany and Central Europe. It was collected by the late Hans Jenemann (an ISASC(E) member) and has been digitised. Thomas Allgeier and Ritzo Holtman have rescued high-quality photos of these beautiful artefacts and have also incorporated a searchable index of Hans Jenemann's original research papers. Brilliant!
As unusual measuring devices go, the cran / half-cran / quarter-cran baskets of the Scots herring fishery are in a class of their own. Here is a well-referenced Internet article.
An academic site at Nottingham UK with a short and useful summary of weighing and measuring terms which appear in manuscript historical sources .
Edwin Schellenberg's fascinating collection, from the heart of Continental European scalemaking in Switzerland.
A Gallery at the Museum of London (Docklands) opened in March 2016. It contains some of the weighing machines from the 19th century used in the docks. You can search the site to see the digitised collections, and find the locations of authentic scales in-situ. Some of the large beamscales are apparently used to weigh individuals from school parties.
The well-loved Pathe newsreels are available free of charge to view online. Some of the clips (lasting a few short minutes) feature weighing and scientific measurement from as far back as the 1930s.
A free-to-use database of UK Industrial History, with searchable content. Contains a digital copy of The Engineer Magazine back to Victorian times (subscription to download clippings). Useful for browsing manufacturers' names and details, as well as for finding technical articles.
The UK Postal Museum (in London)'s website has a searchable database of postal scales and weights, some from the 1800s. It may also be possible to register with the Curatorial Team to conduct research and view items and documents by arrangement.
BIZERBA is a brand of scales with a 150-year history. Stemming from the German town of Balingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg, it has sold shop scales and other equipment across the world. The website is good for dates, factual information and images of its vintage scales.
Gold mining in Australia required scales and weights which were rugged and accurate. The Western Australia Museum has a fine collection, with digitisation and pictures in progress.
Gold mining in New Zealand too has a fascinating history - on this WordPress site two enthusiasts from the Southern Hemisphere based in NZ and Oz show some excellent artefacts and tell very interesting stories about their own family and personal histories.
Burmese weights in the shape of animals are featured in Sydney (Australia)'s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences - which includes the Powerhouse referred to above, but which has now been extended.
A truly international link to details of a museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a 2000-item working collection. Great photos, including a 'Berkel' person weigher!
Back to The Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge, England. Their digitised Objects collection allows searches on terms such as 'balance' and 'Oertling'. Many good items, with helpful descriptions.
Hosted at the website of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. The Greenslade Collection includes a small-scale treasure trove of images of philosophical instruments in the USA and beyond, featuring some European pieces well-preserved.
The Cornish Folk Museum in Helston, Cornwall, UK, has produced a very nice video tour specifically of its Weights & Measures collection - beamscales dated 1796 from the 'Hundred of Kerrier' and Helston Local Standards captured very nicely!
NEW! Norfolk Museums in Eastern England are like many institutions - they're digitising their catalogues with extra high-quality images. Where the objects aren't even on display, this can be very useful for the researcher. I tried a search on 'Imperial' and linked what I found to the records in Carl Ricketts' excellent book.