We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
'LA PLUS BRILLANTE COLLECTION QUI EXISTE AU MONDE.'.
- Authors
SIMPSON, A. D. C.
- Abstract
There is a substantial literature on the major eighteenth-century collectors of the instruments and demonstration devices of natural philosophy, but much less is known about the last great private collectors of modern apparatus in the following century. One such patron of the scientific instrument-maker was Charles Bancker, a wealthy Philadelphia insurance and shipping agent. Bancker pursued his passion for optical and philosophical apparatus through his commercial contacts and made extensive purchases from the principal London and Parisian instrument houses, sometimes also supplying other American collectors and institutions. By the 1850s, his optical cabinet was considered by some to be the best and most extensive private collection in existence. This paper discusses the sources and eventual dispersal of Bancker's instruments, and describes how reconstructing the provenance of such collections can throw light on the collection-building process and on the organization of the instrument-making trade.
- Subjects
UNITED States; SCIENTIFIC apparatus collections; TEACHING aids; PHYSICS education; INSTRUMENT manufacture; BANCKER, Charles
- Publication
Journal of the History of Collections, 1995, Vol 7, Issue 2, p187
- ISSN
0954-6650
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jhc/7.2.187