Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

 

    

Microscope 496 (Charles Baker; compound microscope; c. 1860)

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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 496 is signed with ‘BAKER, 244 High Holborn, London’ and should be a version of the Baker’s compound microscope No. 1 (Figure 1). The instrument should be dated to c. 1860.

 

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Figure 1. Baker’s compound microscope No. 1 as engraved in the 1858 edition of Charles Baker’s catalogue. The same microscope version was featured in several editions of Jabez Hogg’s book “The microscope its history construction and application” between 1856 and 1871.