Implications of the beads
Hall most likely demonstrated the specific gravities of liquids using these beads in his natural philosophy classes. Learning about and observing a mostly hidden property of liquids such as density resonates strongly with the goals of natural philosophy. One of the important principles that drove the natural philosophy movement and early scientific thought in the 19th century was the quest to understand and unveil aspects of nature that were often invisible to the naked eye and once discovered unravel the interconnected quality of these aspects.
Another such instrument that Hall brought from Europe is the vacuum air pump. Made in London around the year 1809, this air pump was used to draw air out of a bell jar to create a vacuum in order to understand the properties of a vacuum. For many years it wasn’t understood that air was composed of actual substance and not just empty space. The air pump helped unveil this fact by demonstrating what an actual empty space such as a vacuum was like (Wendy Shook). In this case, the vacuum in the bell jar and the air surrounding us looks the same given that we cannot see air. However, seeing their effects and properties allows us to understand the large differences such that a bird can swiftly fly in the skies but quickly dies in the vacuum of the bell jar.
Both the specific gravity beads and the air pump make visible properties of nature that cannot be observed or understood by someone who is not using experimental equipment. Many great scientific discoveries such as the spherical shape of the earth, the heliocentric model of our solar system, and the discovery of cells were all truths that did not seem logical to common people at the time. To most humans who walked the earth in the early ages the earth looked very flat but understanding that truth is often found beyond what our perceptions tell us and beyond what seems logical was an important step towards the first instances of scientific thinking.
It is important to remember that the first usages of the specific gravity beads, the air pump and other such instruments were not the first time a given aspect of nature was revealed: there was first a scientist who created a theory and supported it through crafting an instrument. Nonetheless, these instruments were essential to introducing scientific theories to a greater audience and leading them into greater understandings of the qualities of nature.