Geophysics Collection · Physics
A rectangular metal framework, consisting mainly of welded angle iron and aluminum sheet, forms a sturdy housing for a metal instrument, a mass spectrometer. This instrument includes a prominent permanent magnet, the central flight tube, and the narrow metal tubing of the variable leak valve used to introduce the argon sample. Ports at the top of the instrument for the attachment of the data recorder are covered by blue caps.
This artifact was received in a wooden crated (shown in the attached images). This has been discarded due to limited space.
Accession Number: 2024.ph.897
Alternative Name:
Primary Materials: Steel, Aluminum
Markings:
Height = 56, Width = 40.5, Length = 34.5.
The MS-10 was a relatively rudimentary and inexpensive mass spectrometer that was designed to be used primarily as a leak detector in vacuum systems when it was developed around the early 1960s. Researchers in the laboratory of geophysicist Derek York at the University of Toronto Department of Physics determined that this instrument could be used to perform potassium-argon (K-Ar) radioisotope dating. This discovery transformed the field by making it vastly more accessible; Researchers had previously used expensive and delicate custom-made glass mass spectrometers. This artifact was the laboratory instrument on which that discovery was made. (See Farrar, Macintyre, York, and Kenyon, 1964.)
The artifact is intact and in good cosmetic condition, though well work. Though it is likely still functional, it is obsolete and missing its vacuum system and electronics.
Associated Instruments:
Associated Electrical Industries (AEI), Manchester, England.
Date of Manufacture: Early 1960s.
This artifact was purchased by Derek York’s laboratory in the early 1960s.
In November of 1997, the artifact was loaned to Margarita López of CICESE (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada) in Ensenada, Baja California. The loan also included other elements such as vacuum pumps and electronics. These were obsolete and were not included when the core mass spectrometer element was returned to the University of Toronto collection in 2022. Dr. Lopez is a former graduate student of Derek York.
Edward Farrar, Robert M. Macintyre, Derek York, and W. John Kenyon. “A Simple Mass Spectrometer for the Analysis of Argon at Ultra-High Vacuum.” Nature (London) 204, no. 4958 (1964): 531–33.
Historical Notes:
- Donated to UTSIC