Microscope #56 writing

Writing inside the drawtube states the presumed manufacture date of "1841"

This writing is on the outside if the microscope body, but below the level of the optical tube length mark. Thus it would have been hidden inside the drawtube.

The writing inside the drawtube may read: “Augsburgum [Augsburg], Oct[obris] 1841 f[e]c[i]t” If so, this microscope is the first material evidence that supports Henri van Heurck’s statement regarding the so-called Nuremberg microscopes. Van Heurck noticed these microscopes in the shop window of a celebrated old Antwerp optician, named “Ongania”, who died in van Heurck’s childhood. Van Heurck was born in 1838. (Compare van Heurck’s 1893 The Microscope pp. 346-7 or 1891 Le Microscope p. 297.)

Thanks to Jeroen Meeusen, Belgium (11/2007)