If you don’t know the sentence “Is that a gun/pistol/banana/whatever in your pocket or are you just happy to see me”, the world is doomed!

Story: One day, a couple of labmates were looking for a column, when, in one drawer they found this huge piece of glassware. Naturally they start showing (and playing with) it around the lab.

Now a part from having fun walking around the lab with this nice piece of glassware, my question is: what the hell is that? It’s a bird? it’s a plane? (and if you don’t get this quote as well, the world is really doomed).

I worked in three different laboratories, and visited I don’t know how many other labs. Although I’m not working in total synthesis nor in methodology, I do have a good knowledge of glassware. I even know that the Dean-Stark is Wasserbestimmungsapparat (you risk to be brutally beaten if you call Dean-Stark a Dean-Stark apparatus in a Germany lab, see footnote), but I have no clue on what is that. Funny, I agree, but what for?

It’s a two pieces glassware, and I’m not even sure that they are from the same glassware or it was just someone messing around with it. But even in this case, have you ever see a round bottom flask like that? have you ever seen a bottom like that? Quite huge, isn’t it?

So, what is that? maybe an Abderhalden’s drying pistol?

Footnote: Actually the Germans are kind of right. The Dean-Stark publication is from 1920 (E W Dean and D D Stark, Ind. Eng. Chem., 1920, 12, 486 you still have to pay 35$ for a 93 years old paper). The same methodology with a similar apparatus was described by von Haydin in 1913 (über die Bestimmung des Wassergehaltes von Gemiisen mit F. Hoffmann’ s Wasserbestimmungsapparat. Zeitschrift für Untersuchung der Nahrungs- und Genußmittel, sowie der Gebrauchsgegenstände Februar 1913, 25, (3),158-160, you can preview the apparatus picture here) 7 years before Dean and Stark.

Someone can say that Dean and Stark didn’t understand German, but this is not true. In their 1920 paper they correctly cited Hoffman’s paper (J. F. Hoffman,.Angew. Chem., 21 1908, 2095; Chem. Abs., 3 1909. 158.) and Ubbelohde (L. Ubbelohde. “Handbuch der öle und Fette,” 1, 1908, 189).

Not even one word about von Haydin.

And he is never cited in the history of the Dean-Stark apparatus (see for example the nice Andrea Sella‘s entry in Classic-Kit).

I don’t want to say that the Dean-Stark is the same of the von Haydin apparatus, simply because it is not. But the von Haydin’s one is the missing link between the brutal distillation and the beauty of the Dean-Stark apparatus. It was done 7 years before the Dean-Stark and I guess it must be acknowledged.

Footnote of the footnote: this is a clear example of bad marketing and bad communication. If I have to name something “Wasserbestimmungsapparat” or “Dean-Stark”, I’ll go for Dean-Stark. Between “Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft” and “that dude there” I will probably go for the latter one.