'A microscope to look at mountains': notes upon a Swift & Son 'Survey' petrological stand and its British antecedents.

摘要

The development of polarising apparatus and instruments, as well as preparation methods for fossil materials, by four Edinburgh men - David Brewster, Alexander Adie, William Nicol, and George Sanderson - in the first part of the nineteenth century made important contributions to the development of petrological microscopy. The publication by Henry Witham in 1831 of Fossil Vegetables, the microscopical outcome of their work, greatly stimulated the further study of mounted thin-sections of fossils and rocks. Through David Brewster's interaction with Henry Fox Talbot, and their connections with the London optician Andrew Pritchard, commercial production of polarising microscopes ensued. As a result a direct connection can be traced through the nineteenth century to both the design of the classic conventional petrological microscope represented by Swift's 'Survey' stand; as also the development of practical micro-petrographic methods by Henry Clifton Sorby. A number of important artefacts in t e collections of the National Museums of Scotland illustrate these developments.