Scientific Instrument Society 25th Anniversary Exhibition
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07 Stanley Surveying Catalogue
This catalogue of surveying instruments is dated 1903, exactly 50 years after W.F Stanley founded the firm. The preface comments on how growth and industrialisation had changed the business over this period.
“Originally, when the demand for instruments was small, hand work only was possible, but now, when it has become the largest business of the kind in the world, the quantity of work permits the application of high-class machinery to many parts, by which much greater accuracy and solidity of construction results. Thus, as an instance, a Theodolite, when made by hand, was in 226 pieces, now, by shaping these pieces out of the solid, it is made in 102 pieces. This obviates attachments of many parts by screws, which were always liable to get loose, that not only ensures durability with lightness in the instrument but permits it to keep in perfect adjustment, under rougher usage than the older form of instrument could endure. The same rule holds with mining dials, levels, and other instruments.”
Despite all this change, many instruments remained recognisably related to their much earlier predecessors. The volume is open at a page of mining surveying instruments which can be readily compared with the immediately surrounding instruments in the case. Although different in design, materials and manufacture, the mining compass and clinometer near the foot of the catalogues right hand page can even be recognised in instruments some three hundred years older on the shelf above.
Collection: Victor Burness, antiques dealer, Kent
S.J.
Objects lent by Victor Burness, Kent:
06. J.H Steward Military Instruments catalogue, 1930s?
12. Heath & Co. "Twentieth Century" Catalogue of Meteorological Instruments