Instrumenten en universitaire laboratoria, ca. 1860-1940

Abstract

Instruments and university laboratories, ca. 1860-1940. Both for research and teaching purposes, laboratories had to be equipped with scientific instruments. Focussing on university laboratories, this paper examines how this demand was met in the Netherlands during the period under review. Analysis of disused laboratory apparatus, now in the Museum Boerhaave collections, indicates that the bulk came from foreign, especially German firms. Rather than competing in producing them, Dutch entrepreneurs originally concentrated on importing and distributing these instruments. Thus trading firms specializing in furnishing laboratory equipment were established by Kipp (1829), Marius (1866), Salm (1898) and Lameris (1907). Their illustrated trade catalogues show the range of products available to laboratories. In the 1930’s there appear to have been too many sellers on the market, and this led to amalgamations. Meanwhile, various trading firms had successfully widened their activities, producing instruments often designed by Dutch researchers. As university laboratories grew in size and number, so did the number of instrumentmakers in their employ. As a result, apart from acquiring their instruments from outside, university laboratories often had apparatus designed and built on the spot. While there was an element of competition here, this development equally had beneficial effects on the instrument-making trade as a whole. Thus around 1900 a training institute for instrumentmakers was founded at the Physical Laboratory of Leiden University, an initiative copied in the Netherlands East Indies in 1920.