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Microscope Museum Collection of antique microscopes and other
scientific instruments |
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Microscope
245 (C Collins;
student microscope; c. 1880)
Charles Collins produced
microscopes and other optical apparatus from 1863 until the early 1900s. The
census of spring, 1861, listed the 23-year-old Charles as an optician, living
with his parents in Croydon, Surrey. Collins appears to have opened his
independent retail shop and factory in 1863 in downtown London, and joined
the Quekett Microscopical Club in 1865, and the Royal Microscopical Society
in 1866. Hogg’s sixth edition of The Microscope, in 1867, featured
several of Charles Collins’ instruments, including a binocular student’s
microscope and the Bockett lamp. Later, monocular versions of the student’s
microscope were also manufactured. At the beginning of 1871, Charles moved
his retail shop to Great Portland Street, about a two-minute walk from his
former store. Charles Collins’ business shows signs of decline by the early
1890s. The 1911 census recorded Charles Collins as being an “optician,
sight testing, spectacles”, suggesting that his business at that time had
primarily been reduced to fitting eyeglasses. Microscope 245 is a monocular
version of the Collins’ student microscope and can be dated to c. 1880. The
microscope is signed ‘C. Collins, Optician, 157 Gt. Portland St., London’
on the base. Coarse focus is by rack and pinion, and fine focus by a wheel on
top of the limb. The finish is lacquered brass and black oxidized brass on
the base and limb. Collins made the tube of these microscopes uncommonly
large in diameter, so that eyepieces from all his microscopes would be
interchangeable.
Figure
1.
A later version of the Collins’s student monocular microscope as appeared in
an 1880 advertisement in the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society. References Charles
Collins, senior, 1837 – ca. 1915 (http://microscopist.net/CollinsCsr.html),
last accessed on 14.08.2020 Mid-19th
Century Collins brass microscope (http://www.arsmachina.com/collinsm.htm),
last accessed on 14.08.2020 LAST
EDITED: 12.03.2022 |
