Michigan Mining School Petrographic Slides

Michigan Mining School Petrographic Slides

Geology, Mineralogy and Crystallography

Physical Description: Two light-colored pine boxes with no cover or top feature slots for 36 individual glass microscope slides. The boxes do have empty spaces and they are glued together. There is no hardware on either box. The slides display thin rock sections from the US Educational Series of Rock Specimens. Each slide has two labels attached to the glass; on one label is a typed font reading: “MICHIGAN MINING SCHOOL. NO.___ NAME: LOC:” and on the other label, in hand-written ink, reads the name, number location of the specific mineral. The glue that holds the slides to the mineral specimen is decaying and causing discoloration to the slides.

Functional Description: The glass slides contains a mineral to be examined at a microscopic level. Slides were used to press thin strips of minerals flat and hold them easily for examination. The slide containing the mineral was placed and secured, and then the microscope is adjusted for viewing.

Savannah de Luca and Steven A. Walton

c. 1890 (before 1901)

English

Physical object

none

United States

Box: 21.5 x 5.5 x 4 cm
Slides: 5 x (3 or 4.5) x 2.5 cm

Box: Pine
Slides: Glass, paper, mineral

Michigan Mining School

Slides: Typed font: MICHIGAN MINING SCHOOL. NO.___ NAME: LOC: Handwritten Ink: Name, number location of mineral Box: 448 in graphite

The 1901-02 Michigan College of Mines catalogue (p. 119) notes that the Petrography section under Dr. Charles William Wright had 8,887 thin section collections, among which were 60 from the U.S. Educational Series (provided by the USGS? So far no more information on this series has been found outside the MTU catalogue).

A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum

Year Book of the Michigan College of Mines, 1901-1902. Houghton, MI: The College, May 1902. [Google Books]