Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

 

      

Microscope 245 (C Collins; student microscope; c. 1880)

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Charles Collins produced microscopes and other optical apparatus from 1863 until the early 1900s. The census of spring, 1861, listed the 23-year-old Charles as an optician, living with his parents in Croydon, Surrey. Collins appears to have opened his independent retail shop and factory in 1863 in downtown London, and joined the Quekett Microscopical Club in 1865, and the Royal Microscopical Society in 1866. Hogg’s sixth edition of The Microscope, in 1867, featured several of Charles Collins’ instruments, including a binocular student’s microscope and the Bockett lamp. Later, monocular versions of the student’s microscope were also manufactured. At the beginning of 1871, Charles moved his retail shop to Great Portland Street, about a two-minute walk from his former store. Charles Collins’ business shows signs of decline by the early 1890s. The 1911 census recorded Charles Collins as being an “optician, sight testing, spectacles”, suggesting that his business at that time had primarily been reduced to fitting eyeglasses. Microscope 245 is a monocular version of the Collins’ student microscope and can be dated to c. 1880. The microscope is signed ‘C. Collins, Optician, 157 Gt. Portland St., London’ on the base. Coarse focus is by rack and pinion, and fine focus by a wheel on top of the limb. The finish is lacquered brass and black oxidized brass on the base and limb. Collins made the tube of these microscopes uncommonly large in diameter, so that eyepieces from all his microscopes would be interchangeable.

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Figure 1. A later version of the Collins’s student monocular microscope as appeared in an 1880 advertisement in the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society.

 

References

Charles Collins, senior, 1837 – ca. 1915 (http://microscopist.net/CollinsCsr.html), last accessed on 14.08.2020

Mid-19th Century Collins brass microscope (http://www.arsmachina.com/collinsm.htm), last accessed on 14.08.2020

 

LAST EDITED: 12.03.2022