[Anon], ‘Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus’

In the Official Handbook to an Exhibition at South Kensington it is stated, among other things, that “it was desired to obtain objects of historic interest from museums and private cabinets, where they are treasured as sacred relics.” Astronomy, so far as instruments are concerned, is an applied science. Its history is written in the special adaptation of these instruments to its needs. Simple instrumental appliances have been used by students of the biological sciences from the earliest times. Before the sixteenth century zoology and botany, with no other aid than simple instruments, as knives, scissors, saws, forceps, pins, and hooks, had made very considerable progress. The atoms he considered as spheres, and represented them by appropriate symbols. Among the instruments used for measurement of time, there is an ancient striking clock of Swiss manufacture, and made about 1348.