Scientific Instruments

Lenses and slides caught the eye of buyers at specialist science and early technology auctioneer Flints (20% + VAT buyer’s premium) at its two-day sale of Fine Photographica & Instruments of Science & Medicine.

A rare 18th century variable microscope by eminent instrument maker George Adams sold for £88,000 at specialist science and early technology auctioneer Flints (20% + VAT buyer’s premium).

"If it hadn't been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I'm 100% sure of that." So said Steve Jobs of the electronic devices that simulate operators by generating the tones used by a telephone operator’s dialling console, and were typically used from the 1950s by so-called ‘phone phreakers’ to avail themselves of free calls.

The name on the frame was the name of the game at Charles Miller’s November 7 auction in west London where a “rather tired and dirty” sextant sold for £28,000.

This original case of five silver catheters and three urethral sounds marked for the London maker J Millikan might be a strange offering as a prize outside medical circles.

Cameras, scientific and medical instruments specialist Flints (20% buyer’s premium) held its inaugural sale on September 21.

Enhancing a growing reputation at Edinburgh auction house Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) for optical instruments, a recent sale included 18 lots of binoculars and the like.

Pieces with a maritime slant proved popular at the sale at Cowes held by HRD Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on August 3 during the yacht-fest that is Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight.

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries of Maine is holding its annual summer sale, a three-day offering of more than 1500 lots covering a huge variety of different categories.

Triple lens or Triunial magic lanterns were the iPhone 8 of their day. Since the days of the Sturm lantern in the 17th century, the technology had developed from basic projectors producing small, dimly lit images, to these magnificent machines capable of spectacular technicolour lantern entertainments.

A new auction house is to open in London hoping to find a gap in the market for cameras, scientific and medical instruments.

From the moustache spoon and the nose-shaping device to the washing machine, the period following The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a time of prolific invention in the UK.

Readers old enough to remember using one at school may also recall Sam Cooke’s 1960 song in which he lamented “don’t know what a slide rule is for”. Today, few teenagers would know what one was.

Daniel Quare (1648-1724) is primarily known as a clock and watchmaker. He was, however, also an accomplished maker of portable barometers, one of which came up for sale at Dorotheum (25/22/15% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on March 29.