MAKER: SOLD BY THOMAS BARTLEET & SONS

DESCRIPTION: This brass livebox/compressor simple microscope is made of brass with a wooden handle. It is signed 'THOSBARTLEET&SONS, LONDON'. The barrel is about 30 mm in diameter and also about 30 mm high. The entire instrument is about 120 mm in length. The subject could be let inside to be viewed as it moved around or could be trapped between the bottom two plates as a compressor. This would allow a flexible amount of immobilization.

HISTORY OF THE THIS MICROSCOPE AND THOMAS BARTLEET & SONS

Thomas Bartleet & Sons was a company specializing in buttons, thimbles and other clothing-related items. They apparently were active from at least the first quarter of the nineteenth century through at least the third quarter of that century. I have found no reference to them making or even selling microscopes. Interestingly, having an office in Birmingham, where Bartleet and Sons primary location was, was a T.H. Bartleet who was the secretary of the Birmingham Medical Association, and a surgeon.

Instruments similar to this one are frequently dated to the middle of the nineteenth century.