Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

Bockett Microscope Lamp

Bockett Microscope Lamp from Collins dated from c. 1867 (Figure 1). 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, located at 77 Great Titchfield Street, 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’s 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’s 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. 

Figure 1. A Collins’ Bockett microscope lamp as engraved in the 1867 Hogg’s The Microscope book.

References

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

LAST EDITED: 15.08.2020