Diffraction gratings are primarily associated with Henry Rowland of Johns Hopkins University from the early 1880s onwards, and rightly so, but there was an earlier phase of diffraction grating production and use in Europe during the 1860s and 1870s. After Joseph von Fraunhofer’s seminal investigation of diffraction gratings around 1820 little happened for several decades until Anders Ångström used diffraction gratings made by a little known instrument maker called Friedrich Nobert to measure the wavelengths of the Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum. Ångström’s measurements became an authoritative standard, but there were also others whose work has received little or no attention who made wavelength measurements using diffraction gratings, almost all of which were made by Nobert.

In this paper I will examine firstly the technique used by Nobert and the extent of his production of diffraction gratings, and secondly the work with diffraction gratings of researchers such as Ångström, in Uppsala, Van der Willigen, in Haarlem, Ditscheiner, in Vienna, Mascart, in Paris.