Brief History Of Autoclaves Dr. Charles Chamberland is credited with inventing the modern autoclave in 1879, but to understand how he got there, we must look at the research he worked on with Dr. Louis Pasteur at the Pasteur Institute. Pasteur and Chamberland were studying chicken cholera and anthrax, which were killing large numbers of animals in French agriculture. Chamberland discovered that some porous materials, such as porcelain, can keep hold of fine particles in suspension when slightly heated. This major discovery led to significant advances in sterilization and disinfection. During ..read more

What is an Autoclave? Autoclaves provide an essential function for a laboratory – sterilization. An autoclave is a machine that combines high temperature and atmospheric pressure to sterilize any items placed inside. Some items typically loaded into autoclaves include laboratory glassware, tools such as forceps, syringes, pipette tips, surgical instruments, and laboratory and medical waste. Autoclaves can vary greatly, from the smallest benchtop autoclave to freestanding units or even units built into the wall. You will find autoclaves in all sorts of laboratory and medical settings – from re ..read more

An automated counter relieves your lab from hand counting a sample and frees you up to do other tasks. There are many ways to count cells in the lab that don’t require a dedicated instrument, which comes with a different cost in time and effort and possible errors. A counter provides accurate quantification results. Depending on the features in the automated counter, they can provide information on the viability of cells, handle larger sample sizes, report the concentration, and provide information on the size or even type. Here, we’ll look at the different types of counters, including those ..read more

Understanding the population of cells or concentration of particles in a fluid can be a useful diagnostic tool. For nearly 300 years, we’ve been observing blood cells since the simple microscope was improved in the mid to late 1600s. While simple microscopes were invented in the late 13th century as an extension of the burgeoning field of eyeglasses, the stacked lenses didn’t have enough magnification power to reveal the tiny universe yet. That was until a Holland inventor named Antoine van Leeuwenhoek found that by rounding the edge of a lens through grinding and polishing, the magnificatio ..read more

What is A Cell Counter? Did you know we’ve been able to see cells in a sample for around 300 years? While early simple microscopes were invented in the late 13th century to extend the burgeoning field of eyeglasses, they didn’t have enough magnification power to see cells until 1665. An inventor named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1660 Holland found that curving the edges of a lens through grinding and polishing increased the magnifications up to 270x. In 1665, Rober Hooke used a compound microscope to observe cells, published a book about Microgaphia, and pioneered the term “Cell.” Microscopes ..read more

Lab chiller, circulators, and water bath manufacturers have done their best to offer as wide a selection and cover as many use cases as the research and industrial fields can through at them. Here we’ll take a look at some of the companies, many of which we’ve carried over the years, that consistently produce quality items with long life spans. Polyscience Chillers Lab Chillers produced by Polyscience cover a broad range of sizes, and pump speeds, from benchtop chillers to high–capacity chillers. High-capacity chillers are built for high-temperature environments with ambient conditions as hi ..read more

Lab Chillers and Water Baths Lab Chillers and their cousins, Scientific Water Baths, provide labs with a way of controlling temperatures in their experiments and applications. They’re useful in just about every discipline in some form or another, from slowing or speeding reactions to cooling lasers or condensates. Here we’ll take a look at the different types of equipment you may find and their capabilities and their limitations. Lab Chillers vs Water Baths These frequently used lab instruments offer a degree of control in assays and processes. Being able to manage the temperature either abov ..read more

What is a lab chiller? Lab Chillers and Water baths provide laboratories and industry the means to control temperatures, be it in processes, or procedures where things need to remain steady and precise. Either cooling or heating, these lab instruments are built to maintain conditions, sometimes with a very tight margin, evolving over the years from simple boiling water and early artificial refrigeration to digital touch screen control and full horsepower compressors. For hundreds of years laboratories have used many methods of controlling temperature, with mediums like water being a common ch ..read more

How the Lab Chiller came to be Various methods of controlling temperatures in the lab through mediums like water have been in use for hundreds of years. A laboratory chiller for example operates by removing heat from an object by transferring it to another, usually via a liquid. At first ice baths were standard, with 1851 bringing about the first ice machine. Salts could be added to water to depress the freezing point but this proved difficult to control. A quarter of a century later Carl Von Linde developed a method of liquifying large volumes of gas and paved the way for more modern refrige ..read more

What is a Thermal Cycler Thermal cyclers, also known as PCR machines, thermocyclers, and DNA amplifiers are used to amplify and clone the segments of DNA through polymerase chain reaction (PCR). These devices utilize a thermal block in which tubes go into holes that are for the reaction mixtures. The PCR system’s head raises and lowers the temperature of the block typically by a program with set timers. A user then monitors the time and temperature at which the samples are held to create the desired reaction. At the end of the process, gel electrophoresis is used to read the results. PCR ther ..read more