Abstract
LONDON. Royal Microscopical Society, October 15.—R. S. Clay and W. J. Court: The development of the Hooke microscope. After referring to the description of Hooke's original instrument in his justly famous “Micrographia” (1665) and to the account given by Sturm in his “Collegium Curiosum” (1776) of his experiments with an English Hooke microscope which had been lent to him, attention was directed to the important improvement of the instrument due to Helvelius and described by him in his “Machina Coelestis” (1673), namely, the screw fine-adjustment. All previous writers ascribed this addition to Marshal, whose celebrated instrument is first described in Harris' “Lexicon Technicum” (1704) (though it had almost certainly been constructed and used so early as 1693). The failure of earlier writers to mention the important share which Helvelius had in the development of the microscope is most probably due to the extreme rarity of the “Machina Coelestis.”
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Societies and Academies. Nature 114, 702–703 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114702b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114702b0