Changes in visibility in the European market of the microscope in the first half of the century

Since insects had provided a rationalised object for the practices of the microscope in the 1730s, one would not be surprised that the number of microscopes built began to rise, leading to a sharp increase in their manufacturing at the beginning of the 1740s.

Although historians have placed no particular emphasis on this period, they usually report the invention of several new models of microscopes, the awakening of fashion for chambers of physics and natural history, the importance of the Cuff microscope, and the expansion of the London trade.³⁹² Before this time, in the late years of the

seventeenth-century, the manufacture of microscopes had been marked by a decrease in visibility, to which corresponded a shrinkage that profoundly reduced the extension of international exchange around 1700. Up until 1700, trade of microscopes comprised an international dimension, relatively speaking, which decreased after 1700 when the trade began more local and less visible, remaining so until the 1740s. Though historians believe that the British captured a large part of the European instruments market,³⁹³ I am more confident using primary sources to understand the market of microscopes as having always been torn between certain pressures of internationalism --the influence of foreign models, the international advertising and exchange, the privileged relations among countries -- and the demand and needs of local cultures. Moreover, there is no unique model for the marketing of microscopes, and it appears that many European regions managed particularism and internationalism very differently. Such tensions and idiosyncrasies characterised the microscope market since its beginning in the second

392 Heilbron 1984, 211-246; Nowak 1984, 21-22; Turner [1976], 8-11; Daumas 1953, 217-225;

C&C 1932, 136-141. See section 4.4 for an account of the sharp increase in British microscope manufacture.

393 Brenni 1991, 450; Daumas 1953, 123-124.

half of the seventeenth-century. Privileged contacts indeed existed between Italy and England, England and Holland, and, to a lesser extent, between Holland, Germany, the Northern countries and France. Travelers like Balthazar Monconys (1611-1665) visited every part of Europe in the 1660s. In Tuscany, Redi availed himself of two of the Grand Duke’s microscopes, a Roman and an English, in 1668.³⁹⁴ Malpighi, who probably owned microscopes made by Eustachio Divini (1610-1685) in Rome, also received lenses from the British optician Mellin.³⁹⁵ The British also worked with Italian microscopes. Essays of a Divini microscope were reported in a 1668 Philosophical Transactions, Boyle used a Roman microscope, and in 1716 Richard Bradley said he used a Campani microscope. In 1686, Campani also advertised a microscope in the Leipzig journal Acta Eruditorum. Of course, these examples must not be

overemphasised, because there is no evidence that the proportion of foreign microscopes in the entire European market at the end of the seventeenth-century exceeded a tenth of the microscopes scholars used to make their observations. An important aspect of the “international” dimension of the practices of the microscope that helped the “industry” to establish itself in England in the second part of the

seventeenth-century, was that no international patent rights existed to prevent the usurpation of rights. British instrument makers were active in imitating, adapting, exploiting and producing continental inventions such as the screw-barrel and the slide-holder by Campani, the focussing adjustment by Homberg, the screw-barrel microscope by Hartsoeker, the new combination of lenses by Fabri and Divini, the field-lens by Johann Wiesel and Monconys, the movable body and the plane mirror by Hertel, etc.³⁹⁶ Nevertheless, the skillfulness of the British craftsmen was in bringing perfection to small details thus improving the instrument as a whole. As well, they integrated instruments into an expansive marketing culture, in part already promoted by the

394 Redi 1668, 69.

395 On Malpighi’s microscope and the Italian market for instruments, see Bennett 1997, 64-70;

Bedini 1963, especially 410-415, 418. On Mellin, see C&C 1932, 44, 104-105.

396 On these inventions see Bennett 1997, 68-70; Bedini 1963, 416, 421; C&C 1932, 21-22, 41, 106-107.

Italians, which was now characterised by advertisement, competition, profit, growing mechanisation and productivity that increased visibility and access to microscopes for the scholar community. Throughout Europe, the circulation of models and new

concepts for the microscope lasted up until the early 1700s. In contrast to the triangular Italian-British-Dutch visible practice of exchange, the French and German contexts each promoted less visible, though not autarkic, forms of exchange in the trade of microscopes, within important urban centres like Paris, Nuremberg and Erlangen. In France, some academicians were absorbed in devising microscopes for their own work, while the Parisian engineers and practitioners such as Butterfield (1635-1724),

Gratellié, Depovilly, Chapotot, Bion (c.1652-1733), Lefebvre (1650-1706), Gallon, Le Mariée, Pouilly, Le Bas, his vidow, and Jean Langlois were active at the turn of the century.³⁹⁷ They probably filled an important part of the demand for microscopes from French academicians and physicians. In the provinces, other opticians and instruments makers were active. Villette (1621-1698) was working in Lyon, supplying lenses and microscopes to Louis Puget, François Lamy, and probably also to the philosopher Malebranche who was also in touch with Butterfield and Joblot.³⁹⁸ Villebresseux made microscopes in Grenoble; Chérubin and Jean de Hautefeuille (1647-1724) workedin Orléans.³⁹⁹

The beginning of the eighteenth-century saw this European impetus for exchange undergo a major schism, that encouraged a withdrawal of artisans to their own countries and cities, with the exception of the Dutch Republic. Supported by an old tradition that dated back to the 1650s, Dutch instrument workshops were still active in the first half

397 Butterfield, Chapotot and Depovilly (in 1686) built simple microscopes designed by Huygens (Turner 1991, 30; Fournier 1981, 201). The optician Gallon was in touch with Huygens, Malebranche and Puget in the late 1670s (Robinet 1961 XVIII, 134-135). Le Bas supplied lenses to Lamy (Puget 1704, 66). Daumas (1953, 111-112) reported on the microscopes made by Le Mariée, Pouilly, Gratellié at the end of the century. Jean Langlois was a pupil of Butterfield. “En 1678, Mme Lebas passait pour être la plus habile à construire les petites boules de microscopes que Huygens lui avait appris à faire” (Daumas 1953, 101). There remain a signed simple microscope from Lefebvre, who according to Joblot, made his microscopes.

398 Puget 1704, 66; Robinet 1961 XIX, 695.

399 See Monconys 1665 I, 3ff; Hautefeuille was in touch with the astronomer Picard and Cassini (Hautefeuille 1703, 5-7, 19-21).

of the eighteenth-century. They had a good reputation throughout Europe, and maintained privileged relations with North Eastern European countries, and with Portugal where Dutch instruments are still in some collections. Although they specialised in selling nautical instruments, microscopes were also manufactured by many of the Dutch workshops. The workshop run by the Musschenbroek dynasty in Leyden had customers everywhere in Europe, though principally in Germany at the turn of the century.⁴⁰⁰ Jan van Musschenbroek (1687-1748) collaborated with the professor of physics ‘sGravesandes (1688-1742) and created full cabinets of experimental philosophy, a conception that greatly inspired the physicist abbé Nollet --a disciple of Réaumur-- when he met Dutch scholars and instrument makers in 1736.⁴⁰¹ Those of the Musschenbroek dynasty and other practitioners sold many pieces of chambers of

physics to the universities of Marburg, Upsaal and Coimbra, including microscopes. In Coimbra for instance, there are still microscopes from Musschenbroek, Nollet, Adams, Nairne, Martin and Culpeper. Some Dutch workshops also specialised in producing optical instruments, like the workshop of the Van Deijl. The business was usually handed down from father to son, and was active sometimes for three generations, that is to say almost one century. The Musschenbroek business was kept alive between the 1660s and the 1740s, that of Metz, between 1665 and the mid eighteenth-century, that of Van der Bildt between 1730 and the 1810s, that of Van Deijl, in Amsterdam, between 1740 and 1809.⁴⁰²

The stabilisation of professions related to the microscope was also most advanced in Holland in regards to drawing and engraving. Benefiting from a two century old tradition of the visual arts, Dutch engravers and drawers had a fine reputation all over Europe, with masters like Frederick Ruysch (1638–1731), Van de Laar, Bernard Picard, Van der Schley, and Van der Spik who specialised in anatomical drawings. The

possibilities of finding good microscopes, good drawers and optical machines to help in

400 De Clercq 1991, 83-85.

401 Torlais 1987, 28-29.

402 De Clercq 1991, 79; Daumas 1953, 328.

Holland favoured the development of professionalisation of artists specialised in scientific illustration.⁴⁰³ In England the expansion of optical workshops did not coincide with an iconographic development before the second part of the century;

indeed, after having finished his studies in Leyden, Albrecht von Haller, who visited the anatomist Cheselden in London in August 1727, deemed the skeleton of the latter’s Osteogeny to be not as good as those drawn by Vesalius.⁴⁰⁴ In Holland, after the renowned anatomical drawers who collaborated with physicians such as Boerhaave (1668-1738), Ruysch, Muys (1682-1744), Albinus (1697-1770), Haller and Gaub in the first half of the century, young drawers began in the 1740s illustrating insects and invertebrates. Van der Schley and Pierre Lyonnet brought an iconographic contribution to the development of microscopical research whose principal object was insects up until the middle of the century.⁴⁰⁵ Lyonnet’s skills were so fine that he was asked by Trembley to draw the plates of his Mémoires. Bonnet wished to have the plates of Traité d’insectologie engraved by Lyonnet, but Réaumur had meanwhile suggested employing engravers from Paris.⁴⁰⁶ In a small country like the Dutch Republic,

instrument makers, drawers and engravers created a more dynamic general network that included microscopists, scholars, editors, printers and publishers, as well as, at the end of the chain, reporters who reviewed, criticised and diffused the intellectual production.

The seven-years war halted this production. Such conditions were not satisfied all over Europe, it being not unusual to find scholars who complained about lacking a good drawer, an engraver, a good publisher or a craftsman.⁴⁰⁷ The Dutch Republic created a professional milieu that allowed Abraham Trembley’s research on polyp to develop under optimal conditions and subsequently to be diffused such that it had a major impact in Europe.

403 See Giglioni 1998, 395-396; Alpers 1984, 201.

404 Hintzsche 1968, 24. Belchier, a disciple of Cheselden first made his reputation promoting the latter’s Osteogeny.

405 See Trembley 1744a, vi-xi.

406 Letter from Trembley to Bonnet of the 4th of October 1743 (Dawson 1987, 228).

407 Bonnet 1745, xii-xiii; See the letter from Bonnet to Trembley, the 5th of September 1743 (Dawson 1987, 227); Corti also complained (Manzini 1988, 26).

The withdrawal of British and of continental instrument builders to their own respective countries begs comparison to the strategy devised by scholars for reducing visibility of the microscope in their writings. Throughout Europe, microscopical “tags” in the titles of printed material were abandoned during the first forty years of the century, avoiding

“microscope” and related terms. Following is a chart of the number of microscopical writings in five European countries, having titles contain (“positive title”) or do not contain (“negative title”) a term relating to microscope.

Chart. 2. Number of positive and negative titles from 1700 until 1749, per 10 years and for each country.⁴⁰⁸

1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49

-60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30

England France Germany Holland Italy The chart reveals several trends. It explains in greater detail my claim in chapter 2

regarding the drop in the number of publications in Britain. It appears that a decrease of visibility, which occurred between 1700 and 1720, was accompanied by a decrease in the number of texts in the 1710s and the 1730s, regardless of the fact that about half of the texts written up to 1723 came from Leeuwenhoek (which are of course taken into account in this chart). The chart also confirms an idea relating to the French attitude towards the microscope. Namely that a steady and considerable number of publications, although scarcely visible, demonstrates that in France the microscope definitely was a routine instrument. Italy shows a pattern similar to the French one, but with half of

408 A “positive title” is a title containing a word related to “microscope”. A “negative title” refers to a text concerning microscopy or microscope, without a term related to “microscope” in its title. The number of positive titles appears in the positive zone, while the number of negative titles appears in the minus zone. The positive titles give a measure of the visibility, the negative title, of the lower visibility, and the addition of both (without the minus sign) refers to the production for ten years. Each five columns represent the evolutional frequency of texts published in a country, between 1700 and 1749.

Each column represents 10 years.

France’s production and almost no visibility.⁴⁰⁹ Germany and Holland demonstrated particular models of development. In Germany, the number of texts increased gradually, leading to a take-off in the 1730s, a decade before the 1740s take-off there marked by an increase in visibility. The Dutch supply a final model of writing production, in which a sudden acceleration in the 1720s corresponds to three factors. Holland was a

European centre for printing and publication, a centre for anatomical works, and a forum for journalistes, whose reports on other scholars’ microscopical works form about a third of Dutch data. Generally speaking, this chart confirms that, in relation to the production of microscopical texts, France and England followed two distinct

models, contrasting each other in their rhythm, visibility and production. The regime of active visibility and decontextualisation defended by the British appeared to be very sensitive to factors such as the social representation of the microscope, which was able to induce a drop in both visibility and production, which occurred for example during the early years of the century. The method adopted by the French in the seventeenth-century, and by the Italians in the early eighteenth-seventeenth-century, was actually much less dependent on such a factor. In other words, from 1700 onwards, when the

representation of the use of the microscope was affected, only the British felt its effect, leading to the decline of their production. The other countries had their own way of producing microscopical texts, each maintaining a particular relation to the binary visibility-production, and each having its own rhythm of production.

These numbers essentially show that the decline of the first decades of the century was a phenomenon that touched England, and, to a lesser extent, Holland and Italy. These countries had indeed experienced their first visible increase in using the microscope during the previous century, and, in the eighteenth-century, their receding patterns were influenced by each other. In the case of France, there was actually no change in

production, the first four decades displaying a relatively stable number of microscopical

409 However, the difficulties in accessing Italian texts, much dispersed in Italy itself and seldom available out of the country lead one to think that these numbers are rather underestimated. The same is valid for Germany and Holland; further inquiries would undoubtedly reveal a higher number of texts.

But, most likely visibility would not change significantly.

texts. Regarding visibility, France, Germany and Italy confirmed the adoption of lower visibility for the microscope, though for distinct reasons. The French scholars attempted to rationalise and routinise the instrument, a process better conducted behind the closed doors of academies which fitted the economical organisation of work. German scholars probably came up against the limits of their enormous territorial market, marked by a linguistic frontier, while the Italians, affected by the controversy between Malpighi and Sbaraglia that took place in the 1690s, also made the microscope more routine, but waited for the 1760s to reintroduce larger visibility for microscopical research.⁴¹⁰ 4.2. Henry Baker and new strategies for an emerging market

After Leeuwenhoek was discarded on the continent, his definitive rejection was still to come. Although the morphological improvements of the microscope during the 1740s were often ascribed to John Cuff and Henry Baker, historians did not point out that it was explicitly linked to a rejection of Leeuwenhoek’s way of practicing the microscope and devising the instrument.⁴¹¹ This indeed would not fit the scheme of the heroisation of Leeuwenhoek. In 1740, Henry Baker took the opportunity to investigate

Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes and gave anew an account of them, adding a comparative description of their powers to the previous presentation delivered by Folkes in 1723. It is of significance that Baker occupied himself with the quantification of microscopes, for this anticipated what would become, in the 1760s, both a fashion and a need for scientific rationalisation. Among the 26 microscopes by then in possession of the Society, and according to Baker’s computations, the best power had a magnification of 160 diameters.⁴¹² Folkes had already acknowledged that if Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes did not magnify as much as did common microscopes, their distinctness was,

nevertheless, very good, and indeed Leeuwenhoek preferred “brightness and

410 Two sections relating to new models and styles in producing microscopes, and changes in production are available as manuscript B.

411 For a biography of Baker, see Turner [1974].

412 I systematically give the magnification in diameter.

distinction” to powerful magnification.⁴¹³ Baker went further recognising that the microscopes were doubtless not the powerful microscopes of the Dutchman considering some of the most minute things they were able to distinguish, notably the semen

masculinum. He also compared Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes to a recent microscope made by Cuff that belonged to Folkes, now P.R.S. It was a Wilson pocket microscope, described in 1740 by Baker, and later by Cuff in a leaflet.⁴¹⁴ The six powers, from numbers six to one, displayed the following magnifications: 16-26-44-100-160-400.

Baker admitted that certain microscopes by Leeuwenhoek could have had better magnification than Cuff’s strongest power,⁴¹⁵ even if Leeuwenhoek very frequently excluded the highest magnification.⁴¹⁶ Moreover, Baker included various information involving especially recent advances in building microscopes, that directly led him to reject the microscopes of Leeuwenhoek: “I hope I shall not be imagined to intend any disrespect to this famous man, if I suppose, that our present Microscopes are much more useful and convenient that these of his. (...) Let us reverence him as our great Master in this art. But the world since must have been strangely stupid, if it could have improved nothing, where there was room for so much improvement”.⁴¹⁷ The

improvements did not concern glasses, but the morphological structure of the microscope, and the ways for fixing objects. Many of the microscopes sent by Leeuwenhoek to the Society still had minute objects attached to them, a fact that led Baker to posit that Leeuwenhoek built one microscope for every object he looked at.

Assuredly this was not an economic way of proceeding, which explains why

Leeuwenhoek made so many microscopes.⁴¹⁸ He in fact mixed up the two functions of seeing and attaching the object, bringing both of them into the same rigid structure, and, said Baker, “making an intire and separate microscope for every object he was desirous

413 Folkes 1723, 451.

414 Baker 1740, 512-513; Cuff [1742], Baker 1742, 9-13.

415 “I cannot suppose but Mr. Leeuwenhoek had glasses to magnify even more than this, though they are not come to us” (Baker 1740b, 513).

416 Baker 1740b, 510-511.

417 Baker 1740b, 514-515.

418 Ford 1991, 137 mentions 566 microscopes made by Leeuwenhoek.

to keep by him in readiness to shew his friends”.⁴¹⁹ This important paper by Baker highlighted the problems linked to the style of science promoted by Leeuwenhoek, which can be characterised both by the absence of any criteria of economy in his work, and of a modern solution brought to the problem of the repetition of observation.

To this very lack of economy, Baker opposed contemporaneous know-how of

microscopes and technical inventions. For instance, there was the invention of isinglass (called elsewhere ichtyocolla),⁴²⁰ a fine and transparent membrane of talc placed in slides to capture the object: “Had Mr. Leeuwenhoek known this way, it would have

microscopes and technical inventions. For instance, there was the invention of isinglass (called elsewhere ichtyocolla),⁴²⁰ a fine and transparent membrane of talc placed in slides to capture the object: “Had Mr. Leeuwenhoek known this way, it would have