Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

Microscope 224 (R & J Beck; pathological microscope; c. 1897)

R & J Beck occupy an especially important place in the history of the British microscope manufacturing with its beginning established in London, by Richard Beck (1827 - 1866) in association with James Smith (1800 – 1873), and later to be joined by his brother Joseph Beck. Richard and Joseph Beck were nephews of Joseph Jackson Lister, who was a respected British optician and physicist who experimented with achromatic lenses and perfected an optical microscope. In commissioning the manufacture of his improved microscope, Lister worked with James Smith, an employee of the instrument-making firm of William Tulley, to create the stand. James Smith went on to establish his own optical instruments workshop in 1837. Through this relationship, Lister arranged for his nephew, Richard Beck to be an apprentice under Smith in 1843. In 1847, James Smith entered into partnership with Richard Beck, and the company was re-named Smith & Beck. In 1854, the company was renamed to Smith, Beck and Beck, as Richard Beck's brother Joseph Beck joined the company in 1851. James Smith retired in 1865 and the company became R & J Beck and this name lasted for long time. In 1866, Richard Beck died at an early age of 39, and Joseph Beck carried on the business. In 1895 the company became a limited partnership (R & J Beck Ltd). By 1968, the company was a subsidiary of the Ealing Corporation of USA. In 2019, Beck Optronic Solutions Ltd is a descendent of the former R & J Beck Ltd. Microscope 224 is signed ‘R & J Beck Ltd, London’ and is an example of the pathological microscope model of the firm (Figure 1, left). The serial number of the instrument is 20203, allowing to date the microscope to c. 1897. These instruments were commended to the “scientific investigator for laboratory work, or to the student of medicine, zoology or petrology”. The objective nosepiece is from Bausch & Lomb and is engraved with ‘B. & L. O. CO’ and ‘PAT. DEC.1.08.’ (this patent, from December 1st, 1908, was awarded to Edward Bausch for the creation of a rotating nosepiece for microscopes which allowed an objective magnification lens change). At some point in history, a former owner adapted to this instrument a mechanical stage engraved with ‘Nikon, 7030’. This mechanical stage should be dated to the 1930s. The substage is with rack and pinion movement and centring arrangement, with a R & J Beck wide-angle achromatic condenser (No. 180), with iris diaphragm to cut down the aperture, and with two revolving diaphragm plates (one containing a series of blue glasses of different tints for modifying the light, the other a series of central patches for stopping out the central rays for oblique or dark-field illumination) (Figure 1, right). The instrument came with its original wooden box, which included a label with the inscription “Samuel Beckett, Lewes. Purchased at the sale of effects, formerly belonging to the Mechanics Institute, on 17th Oct. 1892”. There are records of a Samuel Beckett living in Lewes, who was a lessee of a shop at 1 Fisher Street in that city in Sussex. This could have been Samuel James Beckett (1849 – 1933) or his father Samuel Beckett (1826 – 1903). The microscope probably belonged to the Lewes Mechanics Institute that existed in the city between 1825 and 1884. Mechanics’ Institutes aimed to provide formal education for mechanics in the science and arts of their trades, and many were founded all along England’s south coast, in Brighton, Lewes, Arundel, Portsmouth and Southampton to name a few.

Figure 1. R &J Beck’s pathological microscope (right) and achromatic condenser (No. 180) (left) as engraved in a company’s catalogue from 1894.