Beckman pH Meter

Arnold O. Beckman developed the first commercially successful electronic pH meter while serving on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology. This rugged, portable acidimeter housed all necessary components in a single unit and allowed scientists to measure acidity accurately and rapidly. It immediately filled an important need in the California citrus industry by providing a way to measure the pH of lemon juice. The pH meter’s innovative features, including an early use of integrated electronic technology, became the basis for later modern instrumentation developed by Beckman and Beckman Instruments. The fountain’s polyhedron is a snub cube, an Archimedean semi-regular solid derived from a cube with all edges of equal length. It was chosen for the central fountain in the Beckman Institute because it mimics the symmetry of the iron storage protein ferritin, which has twenty-four identical protein subunits arranged in 432 symmetry around a core of perhaps 4500 iron atoms in the form of a hydrated ferric hydroxyphosphate. The snub cube has thirty-eight faces and twenty-four vertices, with the vertices representing ferritin’s subunits.

Pasadena, California · United States