How did scientists first figure out diastase (amylases) exactly activity without a control?

Question

Im finding a lot of information online about the discovery of enzymes, but not any relating to characterising the exact testing.
I thought scientists typically used spectrophotomers to measure the production of quinenomine dye from assays. In 1940 first spectrophotometer, then im a bit lost.

In: 1

Answer 1

I don’t know anything about this, but I started googling out of interest, and wikipedia suggests that Anselme Payen invented his own colorimeter. Which is pretty amazing. I’m having a hard time finding an explanation of how or if they did indeed use the colorimeter for this, but I suspect they did, and it seems like a similar process to a spectrophotometer, but less adjustable and designed specifically for sugar.

So the colorimeter predated the spectrophotometer