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Microscope Museum Collection of antique microscopes and other
scientific instruments |
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Microscope
105 (C. Baker;
c. 1860)
The
business of Baker was founded in London in about 1765, Charles Baker, who was
born in 1820, giving his name to the company from about 1851. When Charles
Baker died in 1894 the firm continued under the same name but run by the Curties family until it became, in 1936, Charles Baker
& Co. and subsequently, sometime in the 1940s, C. Baker Ltd. The firm’s
address mostly given as 244 High Holborn, London (but sometimes 243 and 245,
sometimes in combination). The firm produced optical and surgical
instruments. In 1963, Vickers acquired the C Baker Ltd microscope factory and
a new company called Vickers Instruments was formed. Microscope 105 is signed
with ‘Baker, 244 High Holborn, London’, being dated to c. 1860. The
instrument should be a version of the 1856 Baker’s student microscope (Figure
1). The microscope has a brass tube body that is mounted in a brass sleeve
attached to a rack wood and limb, allowing the tube to go up and down. The
fine focus adjustment is located on the side of the brass tube body (with
pieces missing from this instrument).
Figure
1.
Baker’s student microscope as engraved in the 1856’s book ‘The Microscope.
Its History, Construction, and Application’, 2nd edition, by Jabez
Hogg. References Charles Baker (https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Charles_Baker),
last accessed on 12.08.2020 LAST EDITED: 15.08.2020 |
