The Plantamour Funnel for Hot Filtration of Dissolved Solids: A Rare Departmental Artifact This rare but occasionally useful piece of laboratory apparatus was acquired by William Chandler about 1875 and was used by him and other chemists in the Department. A Swiss-French chemist-physician, Philippe Plantamour (1816-1898), conceived this heated copper funnel to allow chemists to hot-filter concentrated solutions of inorganic salts without them coming out of solution as they passed down the funnel stem. A non-flammable fluid – usually water – would be charged through the hole on the top and allowed to fill the copper cylinder projecting to the side. That projection would be heated by a Bunsen burner – the heat transferring to the inner wall of the funnel. The glass funnel with its paper filter which rested in the middle of the cone would be warmed and the solution being filtered would presumably not crystallize. In May 1875, Chandler, as editor of the journal The American Chemist published a technical report on hot filtration techniques which was read at the 10 May 1875 meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences by Henry Carrington Bolton. In the article Bolton described the Plantamour filter (Volume 5, May issue, pages 397-398) and how to use it. Chandler’s Plantamour must have been acquired about that time and shows evidence of considerable use. Whether it was commercially produced or was the product of a skilled coppersmith, cannot be determined but the object does bear a small maker’s mark and no corporate identifications. The mark is a capital B within a circle and it appears on the outer edge. Alas, it doesn’t look enough like an “R” or we could claim it was made by the famous coppersmith, Paul Revere. The Department transferred this funnel to the Lehigh University Archives in 2018.