Word: basswood
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Wheatland's problem is a common one among instrument collectors. Sundials, astrolabes, globes, telescopes, and microscopes are old favorites with antique buyers who admire the shiny brasswork, wax the basswood, and wonder what the gorgeous object was ever used for. While the stiff bidding of these amateur antiquaries has made much of Harvard's collection too valuable to risk exhibiting, their uneducated enthusiasm has depressed its worth in the marketplace of ideas. It is scarcely surprising, with more interior decorators than scientists in the field, that scientific artifacts do not attract any significant number of scrupulous scholars. --From an account...