Gallery: Vintage Chemistry Sets Show We Used to Be Way More Chill About Chemicals
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED01chm-soares-117edit
This kit dates to 1847, and it's less a toy than a kit for serious students and amateurs. Its creator, John Joseph Griffin, wrote a 556-page manual to go with it.
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Griffin's book, *Chemical Recreations*, extolled chemistry as "an everlasting source of occupation and amusement."
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The cover of this Chemcraft kit from 1917 may have inspired would-be chemists with its images of science and industry.
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The Chemcraft kit included an impressive selection of chemicals and equipment.
Photo: Kristen Frederick-Frost / Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum05chemcraft
The boy and the chemist he would become were a common trope on 20th century chemistry sets, like this one from around 1952.
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED06chm-soares-261edit
Like many sets, this one from the 1950s highlights topics that were hot at the time, including plastics, atomic energy, and outer space.
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED07chm-soares-288edit
The atomic energy experiments included looking at a piece of paper coated with radium dust with a spinthariscope, a device used to visualize radioactive emissions. Outer space experiments included adding sodium carbonate and sodium bisulfate to water to power a soda bottle "rocket."
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED08chm-soares-254edit
Girls can't be scientists, but they can still be technicians--that's the unenlightened message implied by this kit from the late 1950s.
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED09chm-soares-177edit
By the early 1970s, when this kit came out, people were becoming more attuned to the negative environmental impacts of chemicals. In one experiment depicted on the back cover, a boy uses the kit to measure emissions from a nearby factory--a notable contrast to the more positive depiction of a factory on the 1917 Chemcraft kit.
Photo: Jared Soares/WIRED10chm-soares-231edit
This 1996 Smithsonian kit includes tiny vials of chemicals with labels taken up mostly by warnings (see next slide).
Photo: Kristen Frederick-Frost / Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum11vials
A handful of lemons might have more citric acid than that tiny vial on the right. Come to think of it, why don't lemons come with warning labels?
