Also 7 laboritary, labratory. [ad. med.L. labōrātōri-um, f. L. labōrāre to LABOUR: see -ORY. Cf. F. laboratoire, It., Sp., Pg. laboratorio; also ELABORATORY.]
1. A building set apart for conducting practical investigations in natural science, orig. and esp. in chemistry, and for the elaboration or manufacture of chemical, medicinal, and like products.
1605. Timme, Quersit., III. 191. Wee commonly prouide that they bee prepared in our laboratorie.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Mercury Vind., Induction. A Laboratory or Alchemist’s work-house.
1683. Wilding, in Collect. (O. H. S.), I. 258. For seeing ye Labratory … 00 00 06.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 392. He had a Laboratory to prepare all Medicines that he used on his Patients.
1765. H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786). III. 248. His best pieces were representations of chymists and their laboratories.
1802. Med. Jrnl., VIII. 87. To establish in London a laboratory, or manufacture of artificial mineral waters.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., Introd. 9. The greater number of the experiments were made in the laboratory of the Royal Institution.
1881. Sir W. Thomson, in Nature, 435. The electro-magnetic machine has been brought from the physical laboratory into the province of engineering.
b. transf. and fig.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 65. The Soul (like an excellent Chymist) in this internal Laboratory of Man, by a fermentation of our nourishment in the Stomach [etc.].
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. 461. Fissures and caverns of rocks are the laboratories, where such operations are carried on.
1814. Sir H. Davy, Agric. Chem., 15. The soil is the laboratory in which the food is prepared.
1860. Maury, Phys. Geog. Sea, xviii. § 740. Like the atmosphere it [the sea] is a laboratory in which wonders by processes the most exquisite are continually going on.
1870. J. H. Newman, Gram. Assent, II. viii. 260. A notion neatly turned out of the laboratory of the mind.
2. Mil. ‘A department of an arsenal for the manufacture and examination of ammunition and combustible stores’ (Voyle, Milit. Dict., 1876).
1716. Lond. Gaz., No. 5439/3. The Ammunition Laboratory … was … set on Fire.
1804. Wellington, Lett., in Gurw., Desp. (1837), III. 528. The arsenal, the laboratory [etc.] … are under his immediate superintendence.
1846. Greener, Gunnery, 85. A fuse, invented … by … a person employed in the laboratory at Woolwich.
3. Metallurgy. ‘The space between the fire and flue-bridges of a reverberatory furnace in which the work is performed; also called the kitchen and the hearth’ (Raymond, Mining Gloss., 1881).
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, etc. 822. The flame and the smoke which escape from the sole or laboratory pass into condensing chambers.
1877. Raymond, Statist. Mines & Mining, 393. The laboratory is 9 feet long, 6 feet 9 inches wide, and connects with the chimney, 2 feet 6 inches square, by a flue.
4. attrib., as laboratory apparatus, chemist, experiment, fire, forge, furnace, machinery, man, (sense 2) stores, work; laboratory-chest, a chest containing ammunition and explosive stores.
1860. Piesse, Lab. Chem. Wonders, 145. As the botanist does with plants so does the *laboratory-chemist with the salts.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1780), D d. A *laboratory-chest is to be on board each bomb-vessel, in the captain’s cabin, in which all the small stores are to be kept.
1898. Daily News, 8 Feb., 5/2. Most of this evidence has had to be tested by *laboratory experiments.
1870. Tyndall, Heat, v. § 185. 148. My assistant dissolved the substance in a pan over our *laboratory fire.
1866. W. Odling, Anim. Chem., iv. 78. Whether the chemist may not effect in his *laboratory-machinery a similar intercombination of deoxidised carbonic acid and water.
1822–34. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), IV. 449. Coal heavers, dustmen, *laboratory-men, and others who work among dry powdery substances.
1828. Spearman, Brit. Gunner, 8. Ammunition and *Laboratory Stores.
1881. Lockyer, in Nature, 318. Whether we passed from low to high temperatures in laboratory work.
