letter scale

Soennecken letter scale

This letter scale is rather old. By searching the internet I came across the German website of the Poppelsdorfer Heimatsammlung. There is information about the history of the firm Friedrich Soennecken. The firm was grounded on May 27 1875, registration was done on October 19 1876. For more extensive information about Soennecken visit the Poppelsdorfer web pages. The Poppelsdorfer historical society possesses old catalogs of Soennecken. They were able to inform me this letter scale was pictured for the first time in the catalog of 1896 and the letter scale was produced until circa 1915. I also received a copy of the catalog page showing the scale. The scale with the turn-over weight has two ranges: 50 and 250 grams.  The  letter

illustration in the Soennecken catalog

scale was originally nickel-plated, see the illustration from the catalog. My letter scale partly still shows a nickeled top layer. The chart of 50 grams is subdivided into half gram parts. The chart of 250 grams shows stripes per five grams. The horizontal strip of the frame reads: F. SOENNECKEN * Nr 188. The pendulum arm has the text: DÉPOSÉ. This suggests this design was protected by a registration. In the catalog is written: Geschützt. This also indicates a protection. The scale has a firm solid tripod base. The plate has the postal rates of Deutschland u. Oesterreich-Ungarn (Germany, Austria and Hungary), the postal rates to the countries of the World Postal Union and the postal rates to countries outside the World Postal Union. Due to wear, most of this text has become unreadable. In the journal Mass und Gewicht, Heft 65, March 2003, pp. 1566-1569, Rudolf Wantoch wrote an article about the German postal rates on plates of letter scales. Thank to this article, the plate of this Soennecken can be dated to the period 1875-1899. Together with the above mentioned period of 1896-1915, this results into the conclusion: this scale dates to the short period 1896-1899.
Below some more pictures of this letter scale.

back weight turned up	partly unreadable plate	back weight turned down
picture back-side	stripes per half gram	picture of front
F. SOENNECKEN * Nr 188	DÉPOSÉ	heavy solid tripod