Protecting our heritage - Royal Microscopical Society

In October, a small group of RMS officers, staff and members visited
the storage facility of the Museum of the History of Science (MHS)
in Oxford. The purpose of the visit was to observe the safe-storage of
the many items within the collections owned by the Society and the
MHS. One of the group, Dr Chris Hammond, provides an overview of
the collections and an update on the more modern of the two.
Protecting
our
heritage
First there is the RMS Collection which was
established from the earliest days of the
Microscopical Society of London and is wholly
owned by the RMS. It is one of the most important
collections of microscopes in the World. It is fully
catalogued and illustrated in Gerard Turner’s book
The Great Age of the Microscope (Adam
Hilger, IOP Publishing, 1989).
Second there is the RMS-MHS
Collection of 20th Century
Microscopes, which is wholly
owned by the MHS, the origins
of which were described in my
December 1997 Proceedings
article. We thought that the
tenth Anniversary would be
an appropriate time to
reprint this article and
also bring the story up
to date.
Firstly, however, a piece of hitherto
unwritten history: In the early 1990s,
when the financial situation of the RMS was
less sound than it is today, there were proposals in
Council that the RMS Collection should be sold off
to raise more cash. “What has a forward-looking
scientific society to do with a collection of antiques?
Bad for our image. Call in Christies/Sotheby’s and
off to the saleroom!” All this of course before the
days of e-bay!
Happily common
sense prevailed. The
Society’s ‘image’ is
surely enhanced by its
custodianship of an historic
collection and also its
awareness that in collecting
20th (and of course 21st)
century microscopes it is
preserving ‘for future
history’ major
innovations in
microscopical
techniques – phase contrast,
interference contrast, etc. in all their
developmental forms.
Cooke, Troughton and Simms M4000 “Universal Microscope”, Inst.
no. 40843, (awaiting accession to the RMS/MHS Collection).
66 Issue 8 DECEMBER 2007 67

pretty on the mantelpiece or display cabinet! However, the twentieth century has seen the most important and
far-reaching developments in microscopy, as well as substantial design innovations, and clearly some policy had
to be established to add to the Collection and preserve for posterity such items as, for example, phase contrast
microscopes, interference microscopes and the like, as well as the standard student and research stands which
were and are produced in their tens of thousands.
Discussions took place between representatives from the Royal Microscopical Society and the Museum of the
History of Science in November 1991 and it was agreed that the following proposals should be put to Council
at its meeting on 17 December 1991:
1. That the RMS Collection remains on permanent loan to the MHS and that it is augmented, if at all, only by
limited acquisition.
2. That the RMS/MHS establish an identifiable collection of 20th century bench microscopes, primarily of British
manufacture, this collection to be the property of the MHS.
3. That in due course a catalogue of such a collection is prepared.
4. That the insurance policy on the RMS Collection be reviewed.
Some of the hundreds of items in the RMS Collection that are stored at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.
The following article first appeared in The Proceedings in December 1997:
The Collection of the Royal Microscopical Society is one of the world’s major collections of microscopes and
microscope accessories. Items were acquired or donated since the foundation of the Microscopical Society of
London in 1839 as important and valuable instruments of historical significance in their own right for the use
of Fellows at meetings of the Society, by order of the Council from the leading opticians, or simply piecemeal
by donation or bequest. In the years up to the 150th Anniversary of the Society in 1989 the Collection had
grown to some 453 items, all of which have acquired, over the passage of time, greater and greater historical
significance.
The Collection has for many years been on indefinite loan to the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford,
which maintains a permanent and changing display of the items of greatest beauty and/or historical interest
– inevitably a small fraction of the whole. It was fully catalogued by Gerard L’E Turner, former Honorary Archivist
to the Society and former President, in his book The Great Age of the Microscope. This, however, is much more
than a mere catalogue; it is a history of the developments of techniques, instrumentation and technical optics,
and of the firms (which are or were household names) which were associated with them. It is also superbly
illustrated with photographs, by the author and by D. J Thomson, of all the instruments and accessories. It is
detailed, scholarly and meticulously researched and is becoming in its own right a much sought-after volume
amongst collectors and antiquarians.
The key proposal was the formation and scope of the “RMS-MHS Collection”. It was felt that electron
microscopes, in view of their large bulk and the difficulties of storage and transport, had to be excluded, and that
in order to provide the Collection with a definable character it should concentrate on instruments of British
manufacture, although not to the exclusion of those from overseas. In this respect it was anticipated that the
Collection would eventually be “closed”, in the same manner as the RMS Collection.
Council endorsed these proposals at its meeting on 17 December and acquisitions to the new RMS-MHS
Collection were first made in 1993 under the auspices of a small Committee of RMS and MHS representatives.
It has now grown to 30 items, each designated by an RMS serial number and an MHS acquisition number. Hence,
although all the items are part of the MHS’s overall collection, they are distinguishable as a sub-set by their RMS
serial number.
Update
Since 1997 a further 15 microscopes and accessories
have been acquired for the RMS-MHS Collection.
Among these is a Watson ‘Microsystem 70’ Microscope,
a Watson School Micro-Projector, a Vickers Phase-
Contrast Microscope, a Smith-Baker Interference
Contrast Microscope, a Tiyoda Comparison
Microscope and a set of Beck Mirror Objectives.
With the publication of The Great Age of the Microscope the question arose as to whether the Collection
should be regarded as complete or whether it should be augmented by further acquisitions and if so, what form
these acquisitions should take. It was recognized that although the Collection was very well represented by
instruments from the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, twentieth century instruments
were less well represented. The reasons perhaps are obvious: the historical significance of out-of-date laboratory
instruments which are consigned to dusty cupboards is rarely recognised, and they usually lack the aesthetic
appeal of their lacquered brass and glass forbears. How often is historical significance confused with what looks
It is planned that in due course a descriptive and
illustrated catalogue of all the instruments will be
prepared and placed on the RMS’ website.
The Joint Royal Microscopical Society – Museum of the History
of Science Collection of 20th Century Microscopes. Vol.32/4.
Proceedings RMS December 1997, pp 243.
Tiyoda Forensic Comparison Microscope, Inst. No. 43283,
(awaiting accession to the RMS/MHS Collection).
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