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Microscope Museum Collection of antique microscopes and other
scientific instruments |
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Microscope
31 (R & J
Beck; model 29; c. 1930)
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 31 is known as Beck’s Model 29 and date from the late 1920s and
1930s. The black stand has a Y-shaped foot with a short pillar supporting the
curved limb. The body tube moves on rack work for coarse focusing and a
graduated knob on the limb adjusts the fine focus. A substage condenser with
an iris diaphragm and a pivoting mount for aperture discs is mounted on rack
work below the square stage. A plano-concave mirror is set in a horseshoe
mount on the lower end of the limb. According to an early 20th
Century Beck’s catalogue, these microscopes gave the best possible service,
both as regards convenience in use and in lasting properties, for use in
teaching and research institutions where instruments receive constant and
hard use (Figure 1). These microscopes could be purchased in its simplest
forms and built up as desired into more complete instruments for high power
work. Microscope 31 has the serial number 8581 and contains the inscription
‘PATT APPD FOR’, suggesting it was manufactured soon
before the patent Nº 336063 was awarded in 1929.
Figure 1. Beck’s
model 29 microscope (adapted from an early 20th Century R & J
Beck Ltd catalogue) References James
Smith, 1800 – 1873 (http://microscopist.net/SmithJ.html),
last accessed on 12.08.2020 R.
and J. Beck (https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/R._and_J._Beck),
last accessed on 12.08.2020 LAST EDITED: 25.09.2020 |
