Antique trade catalogues, brochures and other documents

Antique trade catalogues, brochures, and other documents in PDF of many important makers and retailers of microscopes, and of other scientific and medical instruments from the 19^th and 20^th centuries can be found in this page (please navigate through these documents by clicking on the letters on the left, as the catalogues are organised alphabetically by the company name). To ease the visual search for specific instruments in these documents, most figures of microscopes and other instruments related to microscopy engraved in these documents can be found in a single image database (you can access this resource by clicking on the ‘Images database’ link on the lateral menu).

Most of these references were obtained from publicly available sources, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org), Internet Archive (https://archive.org) and Instruments for Science, 1800-1914, and Smithsonian Libraries (https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/Trade-Literature/Scientific-instruments/), many were scanned by myself from hardcopy catalogues bought from online auctions or booksellers, and many catalogues were simply kindly emailed, or hardcopies were posted, by many enthusiasts of antique microscopes and other scientific and medical instruments. And if you have any antique or vintage catalogues, brochures, and other documents of manufacturers or retailers of microscopes, or of other scientific instruments, if you can, please continue sending me a copy (PDF of hardcopy), so that I can include them in this repository available to anyone interested in these subjects. All these documents are made freely available to share knowledge among everyone interested in microscopes and in wider history of science subjects, and no commercial benefit of any type is taken. When known, the origin of each document is indicated, and I believe that there is no problem in sharing from this page (but please let me know if there is something wrong with sharing any of these resources here so that I can correct any issue found, as many files have been sent me with no clear information about their origins).

The catalogues highlighted with one asterisk were adapted from the Little Imp Suite of Books and Catalogues on Microscopes and Microscopy (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/Little-Imp/index.html), after authorisation was kindly conceded from the author Steve Gill. The catalogues highlighted with two asterisks are directed to files hosted in the Watson Microscopes Resources at Microscopy-UK (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/Watson-resources/), after authorisation was kindly conceded by the author Lisa Ashby. These highlighted files are for personal use only, must not be further distributed or hosted online elsewhere, and under no circumstances should they be offered for sale either singly or as compilations without the permission of the respective authors (their contacts can be found in the respective webpages above).