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Microscope Museum Collection of antique microscopes and other
scientific instruments |
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Microscope
16 (J Parkes
& Son; worker model; c. 1900)
Based in Birmingham, England, Parkes produced good
quality microscopes and other scientific equipment and supplies from the mid-1800s
until well into the twentieth century. Recognizing the burgeoning market of
students and middle-class amateurs, they focused on inexpensive instruments. James
Parkes began his business in 1815 as a manufacturer of small items such
as jewellery cases and other metal devices. James’s only son, Samuel, became
a partner in about 1846, forming J Parkes and Son. By the 1850s, J.
Parkes and Son were producing a variety of microscopes. Their 1857 catalogue
prominently featured microscopes and prepared slides. Large numbers are known
of later microscope models that were manufactured by J Parkes and Son but
sold by other retailers. Samuel continued the business under the same name
after his father’s death in 1877. Samuel had only one son, also named Samuel.
That son, and a nephew, James Moulton, continued the business after the elder
Samuel died in 1896. Moulton left the partnership in 1908, and Samuel T.H.
Parkes continued alone for a number of additional
years, at least until the late 1920s. Microscope 16 is a Parkes’s “Worker”
microscope, originally introduced during the 1890s and which remained in
production well into the twentieth century. Worker microscopes could be
fitted with a wheel of apertures or have a microscope objective easily used
as a condenser. The finish is mostly oxidized brass with some accents in
lacquered polished brass. The mirror is both plane and concave. Parker
microscopes usually show the Parkes & Son signature or the Parkes'
trademark of an ‘eye’. However, large numbers of microscopes were produced
with the brass plate unsigned for a retailer to affix his own signature. In
microscope 16, the inscription on the brass plate states
‘Medical Supply AssocN, agents for J
Parkes & Son’, suggesting that this instrument was retailed by the
‘Medical Supply Association’. The stand of microscope 16 looks more similar to the microscope versions from 1898 (Figure 1),
for example in the mirror’s support limb and back foot, making it possible to
date this microscope to c. 1900.
Figure
1.
Illustration of the Parkes’s Worker microscope model as shown in an
advertisement in the 1898 ‘Illustrated Annual of Microscopy’ (left)
and in a 1914 advertisement from a Newcastle optical shop (right). References J.
Parkes and Son (http://microscopist.net/ParkesJ.html),
last accessed on 12.08.2020 The illustrated
annual of microscopy (1898) LAST EDITED: 15.08.2020 |
