Scientific Instruments

As you peruse this story on your computer, smartphone or tablet, take a look at the keyboard on said devices and spare a thought for the Rev Rasmus Malling-Hansen (1835-90).

In the run-up to the US election on November 8, Frances Allitt takes a look at the objects previous presidents borrowed, bought – and sometimes broke.

C&T Auctioneers will hold its first sale dedicated to mechanical, music scientific instruments and technical apparatus under its newly appointed specialist Laurence Fisher on November 2.

A 19th century singing bird box is a starring lot at an upcoming County Durham auction that features several animal-themed lots.

A full-scale test model of the satellite Sputnik-1 sold at Bonhams New York yesterday for $220,000 (£167,012), outstripping a $10,000-15,000 estimate.

A museum in Switzerland has acquired this extraordinary monkey band automaton at an online-only auction conducted by East Bristol Auctions, in Hanham, Bristol.

Scientific, medical and natural history books from the library of the Royal Institution are to be sold at Christie’s on December 1.

What is billed as “the best collection of English clocks that has come to the market in living memory” will go on sale later this year at Winchester dealers Carter Marsh.

The most historically interesting entry in Bonhams’ clock sale held in their New Bond Street rooms came from the ten-lot section devoted to marine chronometers.

A rare late-18th century George Adams Junior combined planetarium and tellurian that sold at Bonhams includes a reference to the ‘Georgian Planet’ engraved on the top plate. Today that planet is better known as Uranus, which was first observed by William Herschel on March 13, 1781, although he initially recorded it as a comet.

A rare Holtzapffel & Company rose engine lathe turned a few heads at Skinner’s recent Science, Technology and Clocks sale to take $190,000 (£124,185) as the top lot of the day.

It had previously been thought that Daniel Fahrenheit only ever made two of the original mercury thermometers he invented in 1714, both of which are in the collection of the Museum Boerhaave, in Leiden in the Netherlands.

What could well be the largest binoculars ever produced, this one-off commission was consigned to Cirencester auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent following a house clearance in Cheltenham.

This Victorian achromatic cabinet stereoscope was one of the more unusual offerings among the 540 lots offered at Dee Atkinson & Harrison’s recent sale at Driffield and proved the stand-out seller.

IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.

HE had received only a basic education and spoke only Dutch, but Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) is today recognised as the greatest of the pioneering microscopists of the 17th century.

AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.

Christies South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium)ARGUABLY the strongest performance in the scientific instruments section of Christie’s South Kensington’s sale was provided by this pearwood table compass by John Harrison (1693-1776) pictured right.

At Sandown Park Antiques Fair on February 15, Paul Braithwaite on stand HW5 is offering this early 20th century surgeons’ fitted box, made by Mayer & Meltzer, surgical instrument makers in London, for £385.