22 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT 



determine the amount of butter that the respective cream would 

 make, and the oil test, in which the butterfat in samples of 

 cream was melted out and measured, were successive steps in 

 the earlier attempts to determine the correct value of the far- 

 mers' milk and cream. While they were distinct improvements 

 over the mere weighing and measuring of the cream received, 

 they were slow of operation and often misleading in results 

 and therefore failed to serve as satisfactory methods. Several 

 more or less practical methods devised in Europe did not prove 

 applicable under the American creamery system. 



Between the years of 1885 and 1890 chemists at the several 

 American Agricultural Experiment Stations, located within the 

 dairy belt, bent their efforts to devise a method that could be 

 readily used for the rapid and accurate determination of fat in 

 milk and cream. These efforts brought forth several fat tests 

 applicable for the purpose, but the test invented by Dr. S. M. 

 Babcock, Chemist at the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment 

 Station in 1890, now known as the Babcock test, combining 

 simplicity of apparatus and reagents, practicability of operation 

 by the layman and accuracy of results, is the only method 

 which in this country was adopted for general use. In Europe 

 Dr. N. Gerber, of Switzerland, devised a similar test, the Ger- 

 ber test, shortly after the introduction of the Babcock test. 

 The Gerber test has never come into general use in this country, 

 but has found wide application in European countries. 



The introduction of the Babcock test in American creamer- 

 ies proved of incalculable value to our butter industry, as well 

 as to the dairy industry in general, making it possible for the 

 creamery to pay the farmer on the basis of the butterfat value 

 of his milk and cream, enabling the producer to test the milk of 

 his own cows and thus giving him a practical means to determine 

 the butterfat production of the individual cows in his herd, and 

 assisting the food authorities in protecting the consumer against 

 adulterated milk. Dr. Babcock, with his most valuable inven- 

 tion, has, therefore, been instrumental in placing the dairy indus- 

 try of this country on a vastly more substantial and permanent 

 basis than it occupied prior to the advent of the Babcock test, 

 lending its development renewed momentum for the inesti- 



