Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

Microscope 11 (R & J Beck; model 47; late 1940s)

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 11 is known as Beck’s Model 47 (stand 47B) and dates from the late 1940s and 1950s (Figure 1). 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. The eyepiece drops into a graduated draw tube that telescopes from the top of the body. A rotating objective changer is attached to the lower end of the body. A substage condenser with an iris diaphragm and a pivoting mount for aperture discs is mounted on rack work below the square stage. A plane-concave mirror is set in a horseshoe mount on the lower end of the limb. The serial number of microscope 11 is 29481.

Figure 1. Beck’s microscope, stand No. 47B, as featured in a 1951 catalogue of the firm.