Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

Microscope 325 (assigned to J Parkes & Son; child’s portable compound microscope; c. 1870)

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’ 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 325 is not signed but should be an example of the Parkes’s child’s portable compound microscope, probably dated to c. 1870 (Figure 1). This instrument was described in the firm’s 1857 as useful “… for the parlour, garden, or seaside”. Furthermore, “… The hinged slips will be found very convenient and useful: as parts of flowers, small portions of seaweed, the legs, wings, etc., of insects, can at any time be placed between them, and viewed with the greatest ease, without the trouble and expense of keeping a large assortment of mounted preparations”. This simple instrument was also described in an 1881 issue of the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, where it was described as following “the principle embodied in what are known as demonstrating microscopes … applied to a very cheap form of instrument… We are inclined to think that this form might advantageously be adopted in the case of more ambitious instruments, particularly those which are intended for field work”.

Figure 1. Parkes’s child portable compound microscope as engraved in an 1857 catalogue of the firm (left) and in an 1881 issue of the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society (right)