1906 Berger Surveyors Mining Transit Expedition Size Owner ML Jones Goldfield NV

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1906 Berger Surveyors Mining Transit Expedition Size Owner ML Jones Goldfield NV:
$775.00

This is a miniature expedition (model 4C) Berger wet mining transit in good working condition; it is set up for an auxiliary mining scope but the auxiliary scope is missing (if you find or have an auxiliary mining scope this transit with double or triple in value). I have a copy of the original sales receipt, it was originally sold in 1906 to M.L. Jones a Mining Engineer and Surveyorof the company Bruce and Jonesin Goldfield Nevada, so this transit has a great history which is uncommon. It has a and has a 7 1/2\" long scope, 4 1/4 inch plate and a2 1/4 inch long compass needle, serial number is 5968. The optics are good and it has the most complicated set of cross hairs you can imagine with many diagonals and horiz. and vert. hairs; they are good but there is some dirt or something on some of them. The motions turn well noting there is some minor separation in the vertical circle so not perfect, overall this transit is in nice working condition. There is no tripod but it does have the original box and other little parts you see in the photos.The 2 little sunshades next to the vernier windowsare missing.

Mining transit are rare however wet mining transits are most rare, there are approximately 15 regular mining transits for each 1 wet mining transit made. Expedition size transits are rare, the same is true there are about 20 regular transits for each expedition size transit made. Insts. with a known history are rare, hardly ever know where these treasures were used or who owned them. I will include a copy of the original sale receipt and some information on Goldfield NV and the owner M.L. Jones to the new owner.

Postage is $20.00 if within the US, more if you are outside the USA; no charge for careful packing.

Here is some information on the Berger company:

The Early History of Berger Instruments

J.P.Whitelaw

Aslate as 1922, a sign bearing the name Berger could be seen swinging in front ofa blacksmith\'s building near the gates to the old city of Stuttgart, Germany.It depicted two battle axes and an ironsmith\'s calliper above, and the title\"The Forge\" below. This sign announced the presence of a familybusiness established in 1710 that originally manufactured swords, guillotinesand armor. From Austria or perhaps Protestant France (Huguenots), the earliestBergers were weapons makers for the royal family of Wurtemberg. Towards themiddle of the nineteenth century Conrad Berger, whose family had by thenabandoned the armaments business for agricultural tools, raised four sons at 15Thor Strasse in Stuttgart. One of these was Christian Louis Berger (Figure1),born in 1842, and the future founder of C. L. Berger Instruments.

It is unclear exactly how C. L. Berger moved from hisancestral interest in weapons, through his father\'s interest in farmingimplements, to his own devotion to the construction of precision mathematicaland philosophical instruments. But in 1856, at age 14, he was apprenticedthrough the guild system to Christian Saeger, an established manufacturer ofsurveying instruments and analytical scales. In 1860 he worked with G. Shubart,an instrument maker for the University of Marburg. A year and a half later, hemoved to Kassel, Germany, where for six months he studied with Breithaupt andSons.

Highly Educated

In 1862 he returned to Stuttgart, luckily avoiding themilitary draft by drawing a high number, and became a foreman with the sameSaeger company for which he had apprenticed. By 1866 the still young Berger,or, as he preferred to be called, Louis, had completed an additional year\'sstudy in mechanical technology at the Royal Polytechnic Institute, had learnedtechniques of adjusting precision scientific instruments with J. Lohmeyer ofHamburg, and had worked a further year and a half for A. G. Repsold, whoenjoyed an international reputation for making transits, pendulums andequatorials. Berger completed his European education with Cooke and Sons of York,England.

Again, for reasons not well understood, Berger had beennurturing a desire to establish himself in America. So, despite protestationsand offers of help from his father to set up his own business in Germany, hetravelled to the United States aboard the steamer \"City of Boston.\"Making his way to Boston, he found work with E.S. Ritchie of Brookline,Massachusetts, where for four years he made scientific and nauticalinstruments. He spent another year in John Upham\'s Philosophical InstrumentShop at Harvard Place.

On October 18, 1871, along with George L. Buff, anotherGerman who he had met in England while working with Cooke and Sons, Bergerestablished his first business at No. 9 Province Court, Boston. Housed in asingle room and specializing in surveying, engineering, mining and scientificinstruments, the firm of Buff and Berger lasted until 1898. The companysucceeded, expanding to occupy the whole building at No. 9 and most of the roomat No. 7. It survived the Boston fire of 1872, but in the end would not surviveits founders\' disagreement about how many and which of the families\' sons wouldbe taken into the firm. It was originally agreed that each side of the firmwould send one son to Germany to be educated in the business. George Buff hadtwo sons—Karl and Louis. So did Louis Berger—William Albert and Louis Hermann.William A. Berger and Karl Buff were chosen and attended the Stuttgart factoryof L. Tesdorph. The young Berger succeeded, as his original certificate fromthe City Tradeschool of Stuttgart in 1893 attests, and \"did wintersemester in 1893/94… studied trade drawing, and obtained…with very goodbehavior and hard work, … good progress…\" Unfortunately, the Buff son didnot develop as expected, so his brother Louis replaced him. Furtherdisagreements about the future of the sons led to an acrimonious separation ofthe founders and the dissolution of the company in 1898.

There followed, according to William Berger, endless legalwrangles regarding alleged violations of patent rights and violation of adistinct clause that was designed to prevent Buff from re-entering theinstrument manufacturing business for one year. Interpersonal conflictscontinued through the litigation and eventually led to contempt of courtcharges. Interestingly, the schism was anticipated by Louis Berger as a fewstrictly-Berger-labelled instruments appeared before Buff and Berger wasofficially dissolved. The rift was irreversible, as was later reflected, forinstance, in a 1922 volume of the National Magazine, where, in abiography of C. L. Berger titled \"Dean of the World\'s InstrumentMakers,\" there is no mention of either George Buff or the firm Buff andBerger.

Most ProductivePeriod

Berger and his two sons acquired the assets of Buff andBerger, including everything from cash-on-hand through instrument stock togoodwill, and carried on the business in Province Court until 1902, when theymoved the operation to 37 Williams Street in Roxbury. From then until 1922, thecompany made instruments for civil, geodetic, geological and petroleumengineers and surveyors. They diversified to produce special and uniqueinstruments for scientists, particularly astronomers. Again according toWilliam Berger, they were also involved in developing a ‘\'technicolor camera projector\"under the direction of Kalmus Comstock and Hestcots, which later becameTechnicolor. Equipped with a set of excellent dividing engines, this wasarguably the most productive and influential period for Berger Instruments, andled to its association with academia and the publication of its unique andcomprehensive catalogues.

According to a reported extract from the proceeding of theMeeting on Instruments of Precision, before the Society of Arts at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1877, \"There is no branch ofmechanical arts which requires more skill in the use of tools, more geometricknowledge, or greater patience, than the construction of an automatic dividingengine.\" Berger inherited two from Buff and Berger, one built by Jesse Ramsdenin London, and another made by William Wurdemann of Coast Survey fame,manufacturer of astronomical and geodetic instruments, and a fast friend ofBerger\'s.

At the same time Berger was establishing important ties withthe academic community in Boston, particularly with MIT and Professors CharlesBreed and George Hosmer who co-authored an early standard surveyors\' text (JohnWiley and Sons). These volumes, first published in 1906, are liberallysprinkled with photographs and diagrams extracted directly from BergerInstrument literature, mostly the catalogues. Likewise, Philip Kissam\'s latertext, \"Surveying,\" (McGraw Hill,1947) is also richly illustrated with Berger reference material, includingphotographs and a schematic diagram of one of the dividing engines. Indeed, inthis text about 30 percent of the credited photographs or diagrams areBerger\'s, and reference to Berger Instruments can be seen in textbookspublished as late as 1983. Berger was himself a prolific writer; in 1868 one ofhis letters regarding the use of aluminum for mathematical instruments appearedin Scientific American. He was also anoccasional lecturer in New England universities and technical institutions. Inexchange, schools enjoyed the privilege of class excursions to the Berger plantwhere they saw first-hand the process of quality instrument manufacture. Thereis even a suggestion that Alfred Einstein visited the facility in quest ofprecise astronomical instruments.

Catalogs A Wealth ofInformation

Of the early Berger legacy, it is perhaps the cataloguesthat are most revealing of the firm\'s founder. These unique catalogues not onlydescribe the contemporary instruments and their specifications, but are alsomini textbooks about the theory and practice of instrument design and surveyingmethods. One of the earliest has recently been republished by Dave Garcelon,who correctly states that the 1900 Handbook andIllustrated Guide of the Engineers\' and Surveyors\' Instruments of Precision is a \"wealth ofinformation about great American mathematical instruments.\" Part oneincludes, in addition to detailed instructions about the care of instruments,derivations of vernier formulae, derivations of gradienter trigonometricformulae and their adaptation to specific Berger instruments, and the theory ofstadia measurement. There are contributions by professors of civil engineeringat the University of Michigan and George Hosmer of MIT. Part two is anillustrated catalogue of the available instruments, generously illustrated withexquisite pen-and-ink drawings. Subsequent catalogues have a more modern style,but are still remarkable in their completeness. Berger appeared to have aspecial interest in mining transits of the kind illustrated in Figure 2(generously given to the author by Cominco and the Sullivan Mine in BritishColumbia). There was a wealth of other available gadgets, including watercurrent (flow) meters, reflecting circles, artificial horizons, pantographs,and planimeters. The company struck a medal with its trade marks on both sides.One of these, three inches in diameter and inscribed to Wm. Wurdemann, reflectsthe cooperation and respect between the U.S. Coast Survey and a remarkableAmerican instrument innovator.

Berger died in November 1922, but the company continuedsuccessfully under the stewardship of his two sons until it was sold in 1948.Ironically and sadly, none of the Bergers apparently made any serious attemptto save any of their important legacy. Indeed, in 1960, in a letter to CharlesE. Smart, author of The Makers of Surveying Instruments inAmerica Since 1700,William A. Berger writes: \"Your mentioning repairing an old Rittenhousecompass made me think that perhaps you might have an old Buff and Berger orBerger 4 inch or 4.5 inch transit offered as part payment towards a newtransit. Would be glad to purchase it from you if not too expensive and it wasin fair repair.\" Fortunately, and almost by default, what has survived arethe dividing engines which are still in excellent condition.

Today, the company is owned by the Chicago Steel TapeCompany (CST), which acquired it in 1995. Dennis Nardoni, the new owner, hasshown genuine interest in preserving historical aspects of his newly acquiredcompany. Indeed, CST itself has a 75-year history. He has appointed TomMarshall as company archivist and already Berger Instruments\' old records havebeen formatted in Adobe Acrobat and will be available on CD-ROM to historians,learning institutions, and museums (see box on page 10). The severalremaining dividing engines have been donated to various museums. A Ramsden anda Temple are at Harvard. The Smithsonian Institution has received the Wurdemannengine, and the Surveyor\'s Museum in Lansing Michigan has received a Heydecircular engine and linear device made by Le Societie GenevoiseD\'Instruments de Physique Longitudonal. These archival contributions anddonations have been made in the memory of Nardoni\'s son, Brian. In Figure 3 thedetail of the S.I.P. diamond tool and draw mechanism is shown. The zero settingmaneuver of a smaller engine is shown in Figure 4, (both photos are courtesy ofDavid St. John and Benchmark Instruments). The coming years for BergerInstruments are shaping up to be promising and interesting. Whatever the futureholds, an important legacy of these master American instrument makers isfinally secure.

J.P.Whitelaw, a pathologist who lives in Ladysmith,Canada, is a great grandson of C. L. Berger.