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.

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