Two large groups of objects came together to form the light microscopy collections at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. One was already in the Science Museum, collected over many years. The other came from the Wellcome Museum when the two were united from 1977.

On transfer, quite full descriptions [with photographs] of the Wellcome material were written onto specially-created computer-compatible A4 record-cards, with much attention being paid [as for all the more than 300,000 items of all kinds transferred] to creating suitable descriptors [that is, nouns] to cover all types of items. This was a considerable exercise, and owed much to the earlier efforts of the Museum Documentation Association in establishing the parameters of such work.

The microscopical objects already in the Science Museum, in the Physics Department microscope collections, had never been described nearly so thoroughly, but a proportion had accompanying technical files which might amplify the very short descriptions written on 6x4in. cards - without photographs.

In addition, the Museum had a relatively small but very important collection of objects relating to the early electron microscope, and to electronic image processing and analysis.

When I was Chief Curator at the Museum in the later 1980s, I was able to research particular objects at will, but I concentrated largely on the post-1830 microscopy items. Senior staff had to retire at age 60, but it suited both me and the then Director for me to retire in a formal way in May 1990, on my 57th birthday, but to continue as a paid consultant to age 60, writing a catalogue of the microscopy collections, but excluding the electron microscopy and image analysis objects - I knew too little about these! The contract stipulated that I would do this, and continue to research the collections and to publish on them. The contract also said that the Museum would publish the results in book form.

When the true extent of the collections became apparent, it seemed increasingly unlikely to me that such a book would in fact actually be produced. There were two main reasons for this. First, it would have to describe more than 2500 objects, some of them containing many parts, and most with a photograph, and this would require two large volumes with only a small potential sale at the price they would have to fetch. Second, in any case the then Director preferred to spend the Museum’s monies in other ways. In addition, his attitude may well have been further strengthened by the high cost of publishing, in 1993, Public and private science. The King George III collection, written by Alan Morton & Jane Wess, and published by Oxford University Press in association with the Museum. This was a quite lavish treatment of an admittedly very special collection, and much more elaborate than the kind of work I had hoped to have had published. In hindsight, such a manner of making available the remarkable riches of the microscopy collections might not have been the best solution in any case.

The actual initial cataloguing was completed by mid-1993, but objects added since then were catalogued in 2002. Since then I have revised all the entries, sized up all the pictures, and considered what I think are all the options.

To cut short a long and tedious story, it has seemed to me for some time that the best way to make the information available would be to produce it as a CD or DVD, and if this was to be done in an economical way [as opposed to a lavish public-relations- influenced way] it could surely sell on a non-profit basis for about £20, so everyone interested could afford to buy a personal copy.

The potential contribution of making available such a vast volume of information on a key instrument of science, to those working on the history of microscopy in particular and on the history of science and medicine in general, would surely be enormous. The contents of these Science Museum collections are not only of first importance but are now hardly known about, although the microscopy cards generated from Wellcome have been put on the Museum website for all to see.

Having seen all microscopy collections of any note throughout the world, I am quite sure that those at the Science Museum are the most extensive, complete, and important anywhere. There are gaps, for example in having nothing by Leeuwenhoek, but they are few and the many riches more than make up for this.

The material coming from The Wellcome Trust [1]had only a few instruments of the very first importance, such as J J Lister’s stand of 1826, but large numbers of more run-of-the-mill stands, and of course these are exactly those which were actually in wide use. Many of these microscopes were obtained via Thomas Court, who also provided many of the instruments in the Science Museum collection [see below, and 2]. The large total from Wellcome is tribute to a remarkable man [3], who was the sole owner of the large pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in the first third of the twentieth century, and who was a compulsive collector. In the early 1900s he spent more on buying objects in some years than did the British Museum!

It was his intention to create a museum of mankind, to include all manner of material from all over the globe. His collecting was extensive, but his arrangements for the receipt of objects, and their cataloguing, were sadly deficient. It seems likely to me that although he used several different people to bid on his behalf at various auctions, those selling knew of his interest, and didn’t hesitate to put some rubbish in with more desirable objects! I never knew Sir Henry, of course, but I met his son Mounteney in the 1980s, and conversations with him confirmed some of my thoughts.

When my teams came to transfer objects from the Wellcome store at Enfield [this was the size of two football fields] from the later 1970s for about five years, I was also responsible for setting up two large galleries [which are still in the Science Museum], and it was necessary to “mine” into crates and piles of objects, rather like driving a drift mine into a hillside, to find what was present. I recall crates stencilled with “NOT to be opened without the personal authority of Captain Saint”. As he had been dead for some years I chose to ignore this! I also remember three large wooden crates full of curare-tipped arrows, each of them capable of killing one with a single scratch: we treated these with much respect.

I am not myself a collector, and in retrospect I think the only two objects I ever coveted from the many tens of thousands I had personally to inspect, was a Chelsea red-anchor period bleeding bowl, and one of the several dozen shrunken heads from South America: this much reminded me of a student I once taught, and it would have looked fine on my study mantle-piece.

In retrospect, Sir Henry Wellcome [1853-1936] did immense service to history, both by his collection of objects [which numbered over three million at his death], and his collection of printed material and the like: this created the Wellcome Library of the History of Medicine which is far and away the best in the world in its sphere. The academic units set up by the Wellcome Trustees, and especially the main one now based at University College London, are centres of excellence for such studies, and have attracted many scholars of international standing. In addition the income from reinvesting the proceeds from selling their holdings in The Wellcome Foundation [the drugs company] now enable the Wellcome Trust to fund original medical research at a level about equalling that of the British Government. What a legacy!

The microscopy items from the Physics department at the Science Museum were a different matter entirely. As Jane Insley has shown [4, 2] they owed a very great deal to the initial zealous collecting of Crisp, followed by the enormous generosity of Court. Sir Frank Crisp [1843-1919] amassed a quite unrivalled collection of microscopes and accessories, mainly in the 1870s and 1880s, spending a great deal on almost 4000 items. He had been allowed to acquire some important stands following his stated intention to leave the collection to the Nation on his death. However, when that occurred in 1919 he had left no note of this intention in his will, and his family decided to sell off the whole collection. This was done in a series of five sales by Stevens, between 1920 and 1925. At those sales, both Henry Wellcome and the Science Museum bought significant lots. Court was adviser to the auctioneer, and also made bids on behalf of Wellcome, who bought about half the lots. However, some of the most significant lots were bought by the Science Museum.

Thomas Henry Court [1868-1951] amassed a significant number of instruments over the years prior to WW2, and presented many of them to the Science Museum. Some had been in Crisp’s collection, some not, but Court gave over 300 items to the microscopy collections [and as many as 400 other scientific instruments to other collections there]: this has been decisive in establishing the international importance of the collection today. Naturally, many other items were added independently, as individual entries in the catalogue reveal. Some were bought new from their actual makers, others are complete with their original invoices, and still others have impeccable provenances of other kinds.

Unfortunately, no adequate history of the Science Museum has been published, although David Follett wrote a short account [5]. The National Museum of Science and Industry, to give it its full title, includes in its entity the National Railway Museum in York, and the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television in Bradford, as well as a small outpost, containing a prototype Concorde, at Yeovilton in Somerset. Smaller items are stored at Blythe House, near to Olympia in West London, and larger ones at Wroughton, near Swindon.

Work by Gerard Turner in the 1970s, on his catalogue of instruments in Teyler’s Museum in Haarlem [6], established a suitable format for such work, and it has been followed with very few alterations in my Science Museum catalogue.

The instruments are all described in standard form, as in this typical random example, [which has had numbers for the notes added]:

D96/2 is the negative number of the illustration accompanying the above description. All the photographs include the inventory-number written on a scale card: the usual length of these cards is 5cm

These are full enough to provide all necessary information, but not as discursive as some other authors have produced. No other author of a catalogue of microscopes has had to cope with so many examples, and this alone requires some brevity of language, especially among similar instruments.

Only occasionally are details provided of a maker. It has been standard practice to include such information in catalogues until recently, but I have refrained from doing so because information on most makers is now available from two sources in particular. One is Gloria Clifton’s directory, based on the SIMON Index. This is monumental and invaluable, describing makers in Britain 1550-1851 [7]. My own much more modest work deals with modern [post 1850] makers in a variety of countries [8]. See also a recent catalogue by Fournier [9]. Names of makers not included in any of the foregoing may have brief biographical notes attached.

I must here refer the reader to pages vii to xiii of title [8], for I know it to be important when using a catalogue to have an adequate knowledge of the general historical background and other matters, and these particular pages outline a number of useful sources for this. This is important!

The earlier Science Museum grouping of instruments by a number of curators in the Physics department proved to be somewhat arbitrary in retrospect. However, I was loath to undo what had been done over many years, and I adhered to it for my earlier entries: this proved to be a mistake in the longer term, for anomalies and misinterpretations were not uncommon. At the end of the final revision period, with all the catalogue sheets to hand, I adopted a different grouping system, which is outlined below. It provides for fifty groups [1-50] arranged within eight sections [A-H].

As will be seen from the above, the total number of objects is large, but even this number indicates only the total of accession numbers - many such have more than one part under the one number, some as many as sixty.

After having worked through all the collections, the first time this has ever been done, some particular strengths come to mind. Perhaps the main strength is the sheer number of examples contained in the collections. When more detailed work is done on some of the types, the large numbers of objects available will allow comparisons to be made: such work is impossible if only smaller numbers can be seen at a viewing.

As for particular examples, some of the older simple microscopes are of great interest, but those of the utmost scientific [as opposed to antiquarian] importance are modern, by Dall, and already described by me [10].

A range of the seventeenth-century simple and compound microscopes has already been described in some detail in the Quekett Journal of Microscopy [11].

One or two eighteenth-century microscopes are of much interest from their provenances, and two spring to mind at once: 18/1 and 19/34.

There is a fabulous range of nineteenth century outfits in the Museum, but pride of place must go to J J Lister’s stand of 1826 [25/325], for its fundamental importance in the development of optical understanding. See [12] for a full discussion of this.

In section D there is a really magnificent series of microscopes. Few other collections have bothered to acquire such modern instruments, and this is a special strength of the Science Museum, which will pay dividends in the next century.

From section E an exquisite museum microscope [29/1], and a tiny but fully-working model [31/29] are highlights.

Among microtomes, a neglected instrument but one of fundamental importance in the development of microscopy, the collections include not one but two of the earliest ever such instruments [45/1], a very basic model of much significance [45/6], and a series of Cambridge microtomes including one of their original "rockers" [45/28]. See also [13] for a full discussion of the evolution of this instrument and others connected with specimen preparation.