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This month's featured artifact is the Portable Ionic Counter (pictured at left), developed by Clyde Wiegand. The plaque on the box reads "Portable Ionic Counter for α and Fission Wiegand 1942."
The air filled ionization chamber used a potential of 2000 volts. Reportedly, the portable counter was used to demonstrate fission of U235. In the early 1940s, the counter was taken to Washington D.C. by Clyde Wiegand, Joe Kennedy, and Glenn Seaborg and used in a demonstration to Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson.
For more information onn Clyde Wiegand, who died on Friday, July 5, 1996, please go to the following:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Claude-Wiegand-obit.html
