Picked this up from the university dump and I'm not sure what it is exactly.

Seems to be some kind of device that can take gases as an input and analyse it or something. Says molecular sieve on the coil wired part inside.

 

Hmmm...looks like an early form of a mass spectrometer.
Inject stuff in the front, it goes round and round a sieve where components are separated by mass/size, goes to a detector, and as the different components are detected, peaks are drawn out on the paper.

1970's maybe?
Where did you get it?
Does it have any other identifying marks on it?

 

That's pretty much all it had on it, at the back it had a label saying detector current. I tried turning it on, it didn't really give any indication that it was working or not. It has the university label on it saying last tested in 2003 and it has passed testing,

I picked up it from a heap of other old devices they have thrown out.

The internals look like it's in great condition, looks almost new inside. I was going to take it apart and salvage parts but when I saw inside I didn't want to because it looked real neat and in good condition.

 

A mass spectrometer needs a huge electromagnet.

That is a gas chromatograph. The coil of tubing you are looking at is the column through which the carrier gas and sample is injected. Different substances emerge at different rates and hence are separated and detected.

 

It looks very vintage Hewlett-Packardish.