Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company
It was understood by us children, that Uncle Horace and Mr Dew-Smith had started a sort of concern called 'The Shop', where they made clocks and machines and things...Nowadays it is called 'The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company', and is not unknown; but then it was in a very small way, and was just 'The Shop', and was considered by my father as rather a doubtful commercial venture." Period Piece - A Cambridge Childhood (1952) by Gwen Raverat (granddaughter of Charles Darwin)
The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company has its origins in a workshop set up in 1878 by James Stuart (1843-1913), the first Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics at Cambridge. The workshop made equipment for his research and instruments for colleagues in other departments. Stuart’s chief mechanic was Robert Fulcher (1845-1916) but within a year, he left to set up his own instrument-making business in partnership with Albert George Dew-Smith (1848-1903), a physiologist and lens maker, in a workshop on Panton Street. Some of the instruments Fulcher made were designed by engineer Horace Darwin (1851-1928). When Fulcher left the business at the end of 1880, Darwin went into partnership with Dew-Smith to form the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company on 1 January 1881.
Darwin and Dew-Smith divided the work whilst the Company was becoming established; Dew-Smith corresponding with the customers and Darwin taking charge of the design and manufacture of the instruments. Most of the early instruments made by the Company were for physiological or biological research as this was where the demand lay. By early 1882 the Company had outgrown its premises on Panton Street and on 25 March 1882 moved to a new workshop in St. Tibb’s Row.
Dew-Smith was a man of independent wealth and he financed the founding of The Journal of Physiology in 1878. Before long, in order to provide the journal with adequate illustrations, the Scientific Instrument Company, under Dew-Smith's direction, undertook lithographic and other similar work. In 1890 the partnership between Dew-Smith and Darwin was dissolved; Dew-Smith, however, retained the lithography and photography side of the business.
Darwin was a skilled designer and developed many instruments for the Company. One of his early outstanding products was a rocking microtome, which cut biological materials into thin slices for examination under a microscope. Darwin’s design in 1885 was not the first microtome, but it improved earlier models due to its simplicity, accuracy, and robustness. Its simplicity meant it could be produced for a fraction of the price and its excellent design ensured that it remained relatively unchanged until the 1970s. Darwin also worked closely with scientists, who designed new instruments for the Company to make. Research into new instruments increased in the 1890s, so the business once again outgrew its premises and in 1895 moved into a purpose-built workshop on the corner of Carlyle Road and Chesterton Road.
Robert Stewart Whipple (1871-1953) joined the Company in 1898, becoming Company Secretary. As well as designing instruments (he became an authority on temperature-measuring equipment), he helped introduce new ways of working: setting profit targets, broadening the product range to include instruments for use in industry, and encouraging larger-scale production. Whipple became a Director in 1905 and Joint Managing Director in 1909.
These six volumes of letterpress copybooks offer insights into Horace Darwin's career as a consulting engineer in the late 1870s and subsequent engagement in the transaction of business of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company with Dew-Smith in the early 1880s and with Whipple in 1899.