RT Journal Article
T1 Philip Carpenter and the convergence of science and entertainment in the early-nineteenth century instrument trade
A1 Phillip Roberts
YR 2017
VO Special Issue: Sound and Vision
IS Spring 2017
K1 Carpenter & Westley
K1 entertainment
K1 exhibition
K1 Kaleidoscope
K1 magic lantern
K1 nineteenth century
K1 optical instruments
K1 Philip Carpenter
K1 retail
K1 scientific instrument makers
K1 solar microscope
AB This article will consider the alignment of scientific and media practice at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over several decades after 1817 certain instrument makers began to specialise in the domestic entertainment market, transferring skills from optical instrument manufacture to the design of fashionable novelty devices. The instrument trade was expanding into a new middle-class market to exploit an increasing popular trade in optical novelties, exemplified by the 1817 Kaleidoscope craze and new interest among the middle classes for microscopes, telescopes, and magic lanterns. This paper will address this shift towards more popular uses of scientific instruments and optical toys. In particular it will address the involvement of the Birmingham and London optician Philip Carpenter in three popular media formats of the 1810s and 1820s — the 1817 patent Kaleidoscope, 1821 Improved Phantasmagoria Lantern and 1827 Microcosm.
NO Limelight was not applied to lantern projection until 1838 (Lambert, 1997), but I have no date for its application to microscopy. Russell Lant Carpenter says that the Microcosm was discontinued in 1835, after declining attendance (1878, p 50). I am undecided on whether Russell Lant has misattributed the date, or if the oxy-hydrogen microscope predated its lantern equivalent by three years or more.

PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/170707
UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/philip-carpenter/
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30