C - Clerk Maxwell, James to comb
comb 1 n
A toothed instrument for separating and cleaning hair, wool, flax, for graining paint etc.
2 vt to separate, arrange, or clean by means of a comb or as if by a comb.
In Aberdeen the comb works established by John Stewart in 1830 with 40 employees, was by 1854, turning out 9 million combs annually.
Bruce Lenman 1977.An Economic History of Modern Scotland.
![Plaster cast of a bust of James Clerk Maxwell. The bust is painted bronze. Maxwell is depicted with short wavy hair, a beard, bowtie, chequered waistcoat, shirt and coat. Plaster cast of a bust of James Clerk Maxwell. The bust is painted bronze. Maxwell is depicted with short wavy hair, a beard, bowtie, chequered waistcoat, shirt and coat.](https://exhibitions.abdn.ac.uk/university-collections/files/square_thumbnails/c174747e29e117c42f422daef02a1320.jpg)
Plaster cast of a bust of James Clerk Maxwell presented to the Department of Natural Philosophy.
ABDUA:31047
![Dynamical top. A brass spinning top on a stand. The top has six knobs on its edge and three on its upper surface. On a rod projecting from the top is a paper disc divided into green, blue, red and yellow quarters. Dynamical top. A brass spinning top on a stand. The top has six knobs on its edge and three on its upper surface. On a rod projecting from the top is a paper disc divided into green, blue, red and yellow quarters.](https://exhibitions.abdn.ac.uk/university-collections/files/square_thumbnails/c5d44f19b831a93e75e8b9b4762aa590.jpg)
Dynamical Top, designed by Maxwell at Aberdeen to illustrate the principles of rotation (commercial model, 1890s).
ABDNP:201351a
![Scientific paper. A book open on a page with an illustration of the dynamical top and diagrams of circles, a sphere and cube with concentric lines. Opposite is a page of text explaining the dynamical top. Scientific paper. A book open on a page with an illustration of the dynamical top and diagrams of circles, a sphere and cube with concentric lines. Opposite is a page of text explaining the dynamical top.](https://exhibitions.abdn.ac.uk/university-collections/files/square_thumbnails/8955f3e430023d082ed24b34c655b074.jpg)
Paper read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh outlining the nature of the dynamical top (1857).
LEMUR:1000011
Clerk-Maxwell, James scientist;
b 13 November 1831;
d 1879;
Professor of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College 1856-60
As a man Maxwell was loved and honoured by all who knew him: to his pupils he was the kindest and most sympathetic of teachers, to his friends he was the most charming of companions; brimful of fun, the life and soul of a Red Lion dinner at the British Association meetings, yet in due season grave and thoughtful, with a keen interest in problems that lay outside of his own work, and throughout his life a stern foe to all that was superficial or untrue. On religious questions his beliefs were strong and deeply rooted; the words which closed his lecture on molecules, expressing his faith in him, who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth, but also the material of which heaven and earth consist.
RTG Dictionary of National Biography