El Refractòmetre d'Abbe, una eina important en la recerca i en la indústria : estudi d'un exemplar de principis del segle XX Authors Santiago Vallmitjana i Rico Abstract Along the XIXth century there were great advances in the astronomy and the microscopy fields thanks to the improvements in the image quality obtained through the objectives of the telescopes and microscopes. This improvement was accomplished by the suitable combination of lenses with different refraction index reaching the correction of optical aberrations. In all this process it was essential to measure with precision the refraction index. Ernst Abbe in 1872 design his first model of refractometer based on the measure of the limit angle. The great advantage of his instrument was the simplicity of the design, the compactness, the good precision and the reduced size which was able to be a portable device. In this work a description, a study and analysis, including measurements, of an Abbe refractometer from the beginning of the XXth century are made. Downloads Text complet (Català) Published 2008-11-21 Issue Nova època, vol. 1 (1) : 2008 Section Scientific and technical heritage License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.SCHCT declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.