Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

 

      

Microscope 431 (Charles Baker; Greenough binocular microscope; c. 1940)

 

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The business of Baker was founded in London in about 1765, Charles Baker, who was born in 1820, giving his name to the company from about 1851. When Charles Baker died in 1894 the firm continued under the same name but run by the Curties family until it became, in 1936, Charles Baker & Co. and subsequently, sometime in the 1940s, C. Baker Ltd. The firm’s address mostly given as 244 High Holborn, London (but sometimes 243 and 245, sometimes in combination). The firm produced optical and surgical instruments. In 1963, Vickers acquired the C Baker Ltd microscope factory and a new company called Vickers Instruments was formed. Microscope 431 is signed with C. Baker (London), has the serial number 19988, and should be dated to c. 1940. The instrument is a Greenough binocular microscope (Figure 1) and has its original wooden box.

Note: this instrument was kindly donated by Dave Levell (Pembrokeshire, Wales) in May 2023.

 

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Figure 1. Charles Baker’s Greenough binocular microscope as featured in a 1939 catalogue of Gallenkamp.