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Antony van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes and other scientific instruments:

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DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2015.1122837

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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2015.1122837

Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes and other scientific

instruments: new information from the Delft archives
HUIB J. ZUIDERVAARTa and DOUGLAS ANDERSONb
a
Huygens ING (KNAW), History of Science, The Hague, Netherlands; bMedaille College, History, Buffalo, NY, USA

SUMMARY ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper discusses the scientific instruments made and used by the Received 29 October 2014
microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723). The immediate Accepted 16 November 2015
cause of our study was the discovery of an overlooked document from
the Delft archive: an inventory of the possessions that were left in 1745
after the death of Leeuwenhoek’s daughter Maria. This list sums up
which tools and scientific instruments Leeuwenhoek possessed at the
end of his life, including his famous microscopes. This information,
combined with the results of earlier historical research, gives us new
insights about the way Leeuwenhoek began his lens grinding and how
eventually he made his best lenses. It also teaches us more about
Leeuwenhoek’s work as a surveyor and a wine gauger.
A further investigation of the 1747 sale of Leeuwenhoek’s 531 single
lens microscopes has not only led us to the identification of nearly all
buyers, but also has provided us with some explanation about why only
a dozen of this large number of microscopes has survived.

Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . .2
2. Secrecy surrounding the production of glass beads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . .2
3. The invention of an Amsterdam magistrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . .4
4. Leeuwenhoek’s tiny magnifying glasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . .7
5. A new list of Leeuwenhoek’s scientific tools and instruments . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . .9
6. Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes in Maria’s inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 13
7. Leeuwenhoek’s usage and storage of his microscopes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 14
8. The auction of 1747 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 17
9. The dispersal of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 19
10. The mystery of the large number of vanished Leeuwenhoek microscopes .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 20
11. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . . 22
Appendix A: List of Leeuwenhoek’s scientific instruments in the inventory
of the estate of his daughter Maria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Appendix B: Buyers at the 1747 auction of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Appendix C: Leeuwenhoek microscopes mentioned in Dutch collections,
until the 1875 celebrations in Delft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Appendix D: Original Leeuwenhoek microscopes in current collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

CONTACT Huib J. Zuidervaart and Douglas Anderson huib.zuidervaart@huygens.knaw.nl; danderson@medaille.edu

© 2016 Taylor & Francis
2 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

1. Introduction
Especially since the celebration of the 200-year anniversary of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopic discov-
eries in 1875,1 the Delft microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) has been the subject
of many books and articles.2 But in spite of all these historical investigations, some veil of mystery
still obscures the way in which Leeuwenhoek made his tiny microscopes. It is the purpose of our
paper to lift off part of this veil by reviewing the extant literature and presenting the results of an
unpublished document with new information about Leeuwenhoek’s tools and scientific instruments,
which in our view shed new light on the way Leeuwenhoek made his (last) magnifying glasses.
Another purpose is to learn more about the other scientific instruments Leeuwenhoek possessed
and used, and finally we want to investigate the fate of the famous Leeuwenhoek microscopes,
which originally numbered ‘in the five to six hundreds’,3 but of which today only about ten speci-
mens have survived. Why did Leeuwenhoek make so many microscopes? And what happened
since the auction of these renowned instruments in 1747 that can explain the disappearance of
such large numbers?

2. Secrecy surrounding the production of glass beads

Even before he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Leeuwenhoek was noted as being very secre-
tive about his methods for producing and using these tiny microscopes. To some visitors whose
accounts have survived, he declined to reveal how he made them, nor did he sell any microscopes
during his lifetime. In 1679, for instance, the Dutch diplomat Peter Pels (1617–1698) wrote to the
Danzig astronomer Johannes Hevelius:
The inventor in Delft is the ordinary keeper of the main chamber at the city hall. He is an illiterate, but inge-
nious man. He allows one to view through his glasses, but he does not want to give or sell them. To the Duke
of York [the later King James II of England]4 even he has refused it; as to the Frisian Stadtholder [Hendrik
Casimir II of Nassau-Dietz] and others. There are other kinds of microscopes, but those of Delft seem to be
the most revealing. Except the usual [microscopes], he has exceptional inventions, which magnify

1
P. Harting, Gedenkboek van het den 8sten september 1875 gevierde 200-jarig herinneringsfeest der ontdekking van de mikroskopische
wezens door Antony van Leeuwenhoek (’s Gravenhage / Rotterdam, 1876).
2
This paper builds on many previous articles and books on Leeuwenhoek and his microscopes. See for a recent overview of Leeu-
wenhoek’s biography: Douglas Anderson, ‘Still Going Strong: Leeuwenhoek at Eighty’, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Journal of Micro-
biology, 106 (2014), 3–26. See also: P.J. Haaxman, Antony van Leeuwenhoek. De Ontdekker der Infusorien. 1675–1875 (Leiden,
1875); Clifford Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his "Little animals" (New York, 1932), pp. 68–9, online at www.
biodiversitylibrary.org, item 47806 and A. Schierbeek, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek: zijn leven en zijn werken, 2 vols. (Lochem,
1951). Studies on Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes are presented by: Martin Folkes, ‘Some account of Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s curious
microscopes, lately presented to the Royal Society’, Philosophical Transactions, 32 (1723), 446–53; Henry Baker, ‘An Account of
Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopes’, Philosophical Transactions, 41 (1739-1741), 503–19; W.H. van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microsco-
pen, praepareer- en observatiemethodes’, Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 77-II (1933), 4571–89 (reprinted in: Bijdra-
gen tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, 13 (1933), 217–35); Maria Rooseboom, ‘Concerning the optical qualities of some
microscopes made by Leeuwenhoek’, Journal Royal Microscopical Society, 59 (1939), 177–83; J. van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes
of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’, Janus, 68 (1981), 159–98; idem, ‘The microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’, Journal of
Microscopy, 121 (1981), 309–28; reprinted in: L.C. Palm & H.A.M. Snelders (eds.), Antoni van Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723. Studies
on the life and work of the Delft scientist commemorating the 350th anniversary of his birthday (Amsterdam 1982), pp. 29–55;
S.B. Engelsman, ‘Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes’, in: Brian Bracegirdle (ed.), Beads of glass: Leeuwenhoek and the early microscope
(Leiden, 1983), pp. 28–40; Brian J. Ford, The Leeuwenhoek Legacy (Bristol/London, 1991), elaborating his earlier book Single Lens.
The story of the simple microscope (New York, 1985); H.L. Houtzager, ‘De microscopische nalatenschap van Antoni van Leeuwen-
hoek’, Jaarboek Genootschap Delfia Batavorum (1991), 39–54 and Lesley A. Robertson, ‘Van Leeuwenhoek microscopes-where are
they now?’, FEMS Microbiology Letters, 362 (2015), fnv056: doi: 10.1093/femsle/fnv056. For the broader context of early
microscopy, see Edward G. Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic. The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge, 1996); Marian
Fournier, The Fabric of Life: Microscopy in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1996) and Mark Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible:
Microscopy in the Enlightenment (Farnham, 2009). See also the website ‘Lens on Leeuwenhoek’, http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net.
3
Number of microscopes specified in the first announcement of the Leeuwenhoek auction in the Leydse Courant, 27 February 1747.
This newspaper published later announcements on 6 March, 19, 22 and 24 May 1747.
4
Leeuwenhoek dedicated his Anatomia seu interiora rerum (Leiden, 1687) to King James II. In the dedication he recalls the visit to his
house, ‘when Your Majesty [ … ] deigned to inspect my instrumentarium and preparations in the field of optics’.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 3

extraordinarily, but which he never shows. He has many viewers, who sometimes offend him, which makes
him [a] difficult [man].5

Also Leeuwenhoek’s source of inspiration and the moment when he started his optical researches
have always been very vague. Or, as Parker put it in 1933:
It seems quite clear that for some years previous to 1673, when Leeuwenhoek became known to the Royal
Society, he had been grinding lenses and making microscopes, but when and how these activities began no
one appears to know.6

Did Leeuwenhoek learn the manufacture of lenses in Amsterdam, where he was apprenticed as a
sixteen-year-old boy for an education in the trade in wool and linen? In this practise he must
have used low-power magnifying glasses to count threads.7 Or was he trained in grinding and pol-
ishing after his settlement in Delft in 1654, perhaps inspired by the Delft military engineer Johan van
der Wyck (1623–1679), who – until leaving for Sweden in 1657 – worked literally around the corner
from Leeuwenhoek’s house?8 In 1655 this Delft optician was highly praised as ‘a most rare worke-
man’ who could make ‘all manner of tubes and microscopes excelling those of Braband’.9 The same
Van der Wyck continued to work on optical instruments during his Swedish military career and
returned to Delft several times, at least in the summers of 1662 and 1663, even settling in Delft
again for a short time in November 1667, when Van der Wyck was registered as a member of the
Delft Reformed Church.10
Still, who Leeuwenhoek’s learning contacts were, we simply cannot tell. In his letters Leeuwen-
hoek seldom spoke about his learning period or about his inspiration. We only know that in 1699
he referred to the production of small bead lenses ‘about 40 years ago’, which sets the date for the
start of his research around 1660.11 But when in 1673 Leeuwenhoek started to send his observations
to the Royal Society in London, he wrote about his ‘newly invented microscopes’, which suggests that
he made – and used – a new design not long before.12 Between these two dates Leeuwenhoek paid a
visit to England (in 1668),13 where he could have been introduced to Hooke’s Micrographia, pub-
lished in September 1665 and already reprinted in 1667. Although Leeuwenhoek was unable to
read English, the impressive plates in the Micrographia may have stimulated him to intensify his
research. Brian Ford, for instance, has pointed to Hooke’s magnified images of textile fabric
and he has also argued that Leeuwenhoek, in his first investigations sent to the Royal Society,

5
‘Den inventeur tot Delf is den ordinaris camerbewaarder van het stadhuijs aldaer. Hij is een ongeletterd, maer inventif man. Hij wil
door sijne glaasjes wel laeten sien, maer geene wegh vereeren, noch verkoopen. Aen Duc de Jork selfs heeft hij het geweigert;
aen de Vorst van Vrieslant, en aen meer andere. Daer sijn ook wel andere soorten van microscopia, maer dien van Delft schijnt de
speculatifste te weesen. Behalve de ordinaris heeft hij extraordinaire inventien, die extraordinaris vergrooten, doch noijt laet sien.
Hij heeft veel kijkers, die hem altemets wat wegh ficken, ’t welk hem moeijlijk maeckt’. Excerpt of an unpublished letter by Peter
Pels from The Hague, dated 25 August 1679. Observatoire de Paris, Hevelius correspondence, vol. 14, no. 2103-2104.
6
G.H. Parker, ‘Van Leeuwenhoek and his Microscopes’, The Scientific Monthly, 37:5 (1933), 434–41 (p. 438).
7
W.H. van Seters, ‘Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 9:1 (1951), 36–45.
8
In 1654, when he married, Leeuwenhoek lived on the Verwersdijk. In February 1655 he settled in a residence at the Hippolytus-
buurt, one house away from the corner of the Nieuwstraat. In 1708 Leeuwenhoek bought the adjacent house on the Nieuwstraat
together with his neighbour Carl Serval, the back part of which he joined with his own house. At the other corner of the same
Nieuwstraat, on the Oude Delft, the optician Van der Wyck worked in the military repository of the States General. Cf. Huib Zui-
dervaart & Marlise Rijks, “’Most Rare Workmen’: Optical Practitioners in Early Seventeenth-Century Delft”, The British Journal for
the History of Science, 48:1 (2015), 53–85. Published online: 12 March 2014. See also: E.W. van den Burg & G.J. Leeuwenhoek,
‘(Van) Leeuwenhoek’, Kronieken, 4 (1995), 133–183.
9
Ibidem. Citation from the Hartlib papers, 29/5/29A–42B (41A–41B).
10
Delft city archive, Archive ‘Hervormde Gemeente Delft’, no. 468, p. 133 (8-1). Cf. H.J. Zuidervaart, ‘The academy, the city, the army
and the village: locations of knowledge, skills and contemplation for the military engineer Johan van der Wyck (1623-1679)’, in:
Huib Zuidervaart, Ilja Nieuwland and Eric Jorink, Locations of Knowledge in the Low Countries (forthcoming).
11
Alle de brieven van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 16 vols. [1673-1712] (Amsterdam 1939-2014; still in progress), no. 200 [letter dated 9
June 1699]. Vols. 1-15 online at: http://www.dbnl.org/auteurs/auteur.php?id=leeu027.
12
Ibidem, no. 30 [letter dated 28 April 1673] and no. 42 [letter dated 15 August 1673]. Cf. Marian Fournier, ‘Een microscoop van
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’, Gewina, 25 (2002), 70–74 (p. 73).
13
Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), p. 51. Cf. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 11 [letter dated 7 September 1674].
4 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

repeated and further developed observations of the same sequence of specimens published earlier by
Hooke.14
About Leeuwenhoek’s inspiration, we further know that the Delft physician Regnerus de Graaf
stimulated Leeuwenhoek in his microscopic research. It was De Graaf who, in April 1673, in the
midst of a war between England and the Dutch Republic, felt compelled to introduce Leeuwenhoek
to his correspondent Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society. According to De Graaf, his
friend Leeuwenhoek ‘hath lately contrived microscopes excelling those that have been hitherto made
by Eustachio Divini and others’.15 De Graaf had settled in Delft in 1666, after obtaining a degree in
medicine at the French university of Angers. He was acquainted with Leeuwenhoek at least since
1668 or 1669, when Leeuwenhoek attended a dissection of a dog performed by De Graaf.16 From
another occasion, when in his presence a rabbit was dissected, Leeuwenhoek testifies that De
Graaf used a ‘magnifying glass’ in his anatomical research.17 Whether or not a microscope was
meant by this remark, De Graaf surely witnessed the introduction of microscopic research in anat-
omy during his study at Leiden University in the years 1663–1665.18 Unfortunately, De Graaf would
not live to see what he had achieved. He died on 17 August 1673, two days after his friend Leeuwen-
hoek had sent his first letter to Oldenburg without the intervention of an intermediary.19

3. The invention of an Amsterdam magistrate

From De Graaf’s letter we learn that in April 1673 Leeuwenhoek possessed a ‘magnifying glass’ that
surpassed the performance of the compound microscopes made by Eustachio Divini, the best Italian
optician of the time. But where did it come from? What can we reconstruct about the development of
Leeuwenhoek’s microscope? Firstly, it is clear that Leeuwenhoek with his single lens microscope did
not start from scratch. It has been established that the single lens microscope was introduced in the
Dutch Republic around 1660.20 Most likely the device was an invention of the Amsterdam mathe-
matician and magistrate Johannes Hudde (1628–1704), who studied at Leiden University from 1648
until 1654. In Leiden Hudde was educated in mathematics, and thus also in optics and dioptrics,
regarded at the time as part of that field. In 1656 Hudde composed a short theoretical paper on
the design of hyperbolic telescope lenses, entitled Specilla circularia, which was published anon-
ymously in a broadsheet.21 At that time Hudde was a member of a Leiden-based study group of
mathematicians, who worked on Cartesian geometry under the supervision of Professor Frans
van Schooten Jr. It must have been in this group that Hudde was introduced to microscopy. The
first known (compound) microscope in Leiden was bought in 1655 by Van Schooten’s close friend,
the mathematician Samuel Kechel ab Hollensteyn, who also was an acquaintance of Hudde.22 A year
14
Brian J. Ford, ‘The van Leeuwenhoek Specimens’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 36:1 (1981), 37–59 (p. 53);
idem, The Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), pp. 23, 27; idem, ‘The Royal Society and the Microscope’, Notes and Records of the
Royal Society of London, 55:1 (2001), 29–49 (p. 32).
15
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 1 [letter dated April 1673]. Eustachio Divini (1610-1685) was a well-known Italian opti-
cian, making compound microscopes and telescopes of high quality. Oldenburg had published a description of Divini’s ‘micro-
scope of a new fashion’ in the Philosophical Transactions 3, no. 42 (Dec. 1668), p. 842.
16
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 37 [letter dated 14 January 1678].
17
Ibidem, no. 84 [letter dated 30 March 1685]: ‘ … Hr de Graaff, [ … ] schoon hij selfs tot behulp een vergrootglas gebruijkte’.
18
De Graaf enrolled at Leiden University on 5 April 1663. In Leiden he made his acquaintance with later microscopists, such as Jan
Swammerdam and Frederik Ruysch. Cf. G.A. Lindeboom, Reinier de Graaf. Leven en werken (Delft 1973), pp. 21–2; L.C. Palm, ‘De
Graafs invloed op Van Leeuwenhoek’, in: H.L. Houtzager (ed), Reinier de Graaf 1641-1673: In sijn leven Nauwkeurig Ontleder en
gelukkig Geneesheer tot Delft (Rotterdam, 1991), pp. 41–52.
19
Delft Archive, Burial register (Oude Kerk), 14 inv. 42, folio 39v; Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven, no. 2 [letter 15 August 1673].
20
Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic (n. 2).
21
Rienk Vermij & Eisso Atzema, ‘Specilla circularia: an Unknown Work by Johannes Hudde’, Studia Leibnitiana, 27:1 (1995), 104–121.
22
Huib Zuidervaart & Veerle Beurze, ‘Samuel Carolus Kechel ab Hollenstein (1611-1668). Wiskundige en astronoom in de marge van
academisch Leiden’, Leids Jaarboekje (2014), pp. 25–58. Kechel’s microscope revealed a fly’s eye as big as the egg of a chicken.
Interestingly, the Danish scholar Erasmus Bartholin, who in 1661 published the first known essay on the microscopic structure of
snowflakes, rented a room from Kechel, when he in 1646 enrolled as a student at Leiden University. Bartholin was also one of the
editors of the Principia matheseos universalis, seu introductio ad geometriæ methodum Renati Descartes (Leiden 1651), to which
book Johannes Hudde also contributed. Cf. Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), p. 34.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 5

later the subject of microscopy received a boost in the Netherlands after the publication in The
Hague of Pierre Borel’s Observationem Microcospicarum Centuria.23 In 1657, in a letter to a friend,
Hudde wrote that he planned to investigate the procreation of animals by means of magnifying
glasses, as soon as he had mastered the foundations of medicine.24 Nothing is heard of this intention
until after a Grand Tour Hudde made in 1659 together with some friends. Soon after his return,
Hudde must have discovered a way to produce a single lens microscope. This invention was probably
a side-product of Hudde’s investigations into the fascinating brittle larmes de verre (‘glass tears’), in
English better known as ‘Prince Rupert’s drops’.25 These small glass beads in the form of a tear-drop
with a fine tail were made by dripping molten glass into cold water. These objects had become known
to the continental European natural philosophers around 1650. The French scholar Balthasar de
Monconys was very interested in these larmes de verre. In his travel journal he gives due attention
to these droplets. In August 1663 Monchonys visited Hudde in Amsterdam, and discussed with him
and Isaac Vossius the properties of these ‘glass tears’.26 But next to these discussions Monchonys also
left us the following report on Hudde’s single lens microscope:
M. Hudde is very skilled in Algebra, and has found a way to make small single lens microscopes, of which he
gave one to me and my son. He told us the manner in which he forms these small lenses. He simply makes the
lamp to melt very pure crystal, from which he removed the salt that is in it, by making it blush, because then this
salt comes at the surface of the glass, which then is easily removed. So the glass being very pure, he then takes a
bit at the tip of a small rod of red iron, where he attaches the amount that one wishes &c. During the melting of
the lamp, the rod of iron is turned on which [the glass] is attached, and it is perfectly smoothed around it. Some-
times, instead of crystal, he takes a small bladder glass, full of water, which has the same effect.27

In short, Hudde’s lenses were made by heating a piece of glass at the point of a needle. The small
spherical drop formed at the end constituted the lens of the microscope. According to the microsco-
pist Jan Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek initially followed Hudde’s invention.28 In his Bybel der Nat-
uure, Swammerdam testified that the ‘accurate Leeuwenhoek in Delft’ was the first to show him ‘a
magnifying glass after the invention of the lord mayor Hudde from Amsterdam’.29 Elsewhere in
his book Swammerdam praised Hudde for the invention of these ‘unparalleled’ magnifying glasses.30

23
Pierre Borel, Observationem Microcospicarum Centuria (The Hague, 1656). Published together with idem, De Vero Telescopii Inven-
tore (The Hague, 1655 [= 1656]). See also Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic (n. 2).
24
Johannes Hudde to Cornelis van Velthuysen, 13 October 1657 (Univ. Libr. Amsterdam, UB: HSS-mag.: D 29), cited by Cornelis. de
Waard, lemma ‘Hudde’, in: Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, vol 1 (Leiden 1911), p. 1171.
25
L. Brodley [et al.], ‘Prince Rupert’s Drops’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 41 (1986), 1–26; Peter de Clercq, ‘Brittle
glass: a fragile chapter in the history of experimental physics’, in: R.G.W. Anderson, J.A. Bennett & W.F. Ryan (eds.), Making Instru-
ments Count. Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 255–67.
26
B. de Monconys, Journal des voyages, vol. 2 (Lyon, 1666), 162, 180. See also: Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, ‘A view from the mountain
top. The development of Isaac Vossius’ optics, 1658-1666’, in: Eric Jorink & Dirk van Miert, Isaac Vossius (1618-1689) Between
Science and Scholarship (Leiden, 2012), 157–88.
27
20 August 1663: ‘M. Hudde estimé très habile dans l’Algebre, & qui a trouvé la façon des petits microscopes a une seule lentille,
dont il en donna un à M. un a moy, & à mon fils. Il nous dit la manière de laquelle il tailloit ces petites lentilles. Il faisoit simple-
ment fondre à la lampe du cristal bien pur de soy, d’où il oste le sel qui est dedans, en le faisant rougir, car alors ce sel vient tout à
la superficie du verre, dont on l’oste apres avec facilité: le verre donc estant bien pur, il en prend un peu au bout d’une petite
verge de fer rouge, où il s’en attache la quantité qu’on veut. & Lors le faisant fondre à la lampe, & tournant la verge de fer, au bout
de laquelle il est, il s’arrondit de luy mesme parfaitement. Quelquefois, au lieu de crystal, il prend une petite vessie de verre pleine
de l’eau, qui fait le mesme effet’. B. de Monconys, Journal des voyages, vol. 2 (Lyon, 1666), 161–2. A week earlier De Monconys
visited Isaac Vossius in The Hague, who also had one of these microscopes. Ibidem, p. 153.
28
Swammerdam visited Leeuwenhoek twice in August 1674. Cf. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 11 [letter dated 7 Sep-
tember 1674].
29
‘ … gelyk my dat de naaukeurige Leeuwenhoek tot Delft het eerste onder een vergrootglas naa de uitvinding van den Heer Bur-
gemeester Hudde tot Amsterdam getoont heeft’. J. Swammerdam, Bybel der Natuure, vol. 1 (Leyden, 1737), p. 377. See also: H.L.
Houtzager, ‘Johannes Hudde en zijn vergrotende glazen bolletjes’, Scientiarum Historia, 31:2 (2005), 155–63. Swammerdam’s
Bybel der Natuure was published posthumously in 1737, but was written in the 1670s. See: G.A. Lindeboom, ‘Jan Swammerdam
als microscopist’, Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis der geneeskunde, natuurwetenschappen, wiskunde en techniek, 4 (1981), 87–110
(p. 94).
30
J. Swammerdam, Historia generalis insectorum ofte Algemeene verhandeling van de bloedeloose dierkens (Utrecht: Meindardus van
Dreunen, 1669), p. 81. See also: Swammerdam, Bybel der Natuure (n. 29), p. 91.
6 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

Hudde’s technique was soon followed by other microscopists, the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza
probably being one of them. Spinoza, who made lenses for microscopes and telescopes as early as
1661, lived at that time in Rijnsburg, close to Leiden.31 There he instructed ‘young disciples from
the Leiden Academy’ in Cartesian physics.32 In 1661 the Danish scholar Ole Borch noted in his jour-
nal that Hudde and Spinoza were the most convinced Cartesians, implying that the two were
acquainted.33 Unfortunately only from later years can it be confirmed that Hudde and Spinoza
worked together and corresponded concerning dioptrical problems.34 In 1663 Spinoza moved to
Voorburg, a five-minute walk from Hofwijck, the estate of the Huygens family, where Christiaan
Huygens was also intensively engaged into dioptrics. Huygens, too, used Hudde’s method for pro-
ducing single lens microscopes.35 However, until 1678 Huygens preferred compound microscopes.36
Huygens preferred their clearer image and depth of field, although he admitted to Hudde in 1665
that the single lens microscope had a higher magnification.37 However, at that time Huygens’s inter-
ests were not microscopes but telescopes and especially his efforts to mechanize the grinding of these
lenses. On the latter Spinoza commented that ‘in polishing spherical plates a free hand yields safer
and better results than any machine’.38 Huygens introduced Spinoza also to Robert Hooke’s Micro-
graphia, which unfortunately was not very accessible to most Dutchmen (including Hudde, Spinoza
and Leeuwenhoek) because of the English language.39
In his Micrographia Hooke described another – probably independently developed – method for
the construction of a single lens microscope.40 However Hooke despised this instrument as being
impossible to work with.41 So, for all his Micrographia observations Hooke used compound micro-
scopes with a rather moderate magnification.42 The method given by Hooke was in fact a variant of
Hudde’s modus operandi: over a flame, a rod of glass was pulled into a fine wire until it broke. An end
of this wire was put into the flame and twirled until a small spherical bead was formed, which then
was ground and polished into a plano-convex lens.43 This method had the advantage of clean glass

31
H.D. Schepelern (ed.), Olai Borrichii itinerarium 1660-1665. The journal of the Danish polyhistor Ole Borch, vol. 1 (Copenhagen /
London, 1983), p. 214. Cf. Wim Klever, ‘Spinoza and Van den Enden in Borch’s diary in 1661 and 1662’, Studia Spinozana, 5
(1989), 311–25; W.N.A. Klever & J. van Zuylen, ‘Insignis Opticus. Spinoza in de geschiedenis van de optica’, De Zeventiende
Eeuw, 6 (1990), 47–63; Rienk Vermij, ‘Instruments and the making of a philosopher. Spinoza’s Career in optics’, Intellectual History
Review, 23:1 (2013), 65–81.
32
W. Klever, ‘De Leidse Spinoza’ (2010), online publication, see: http://www.benedictusdespinoza.nl.
33
Ibidem. Klever suggests that Hudde and Spinoza knew each other through the mathematician Frans van Schooten jr.
34
The known correspondence between Hudde and Spinoza dates from the year 1666. Cf. Steven Barbone [et al.] (eds.), Benedictus
de Spinoza. The letters; transl. by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, 1995).
35
Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 13 (The Hague, 1916), p. 521 [our translation from the Latin]: ‘Pieces of glass are
brought to the bottom of the flame of a lamp, where a blue colour is seen, so they will glow, and then when a piece of wire
(as thin drawn as possible) is included and further agile rotated; then they turn into balls, which are large enough if they
match a mustard seed. Among several made in this way, you will find some adequate, and you can check this after you’ve
enclosed them in a copper plate’.
36
Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic (n. 2), p. 15. Cf. M. Fournier, ‘Huygens’ designs for a simple microscope’, Annals of
Science, 46 (1989), 575–96; A. Turner, ‘Microscopical Advances: The posterity of Huygens’ simple microscope of 1678’, Éndoxa:
Series Filosóficas, 19 (2005), 41–57.
37
Remark of Huygens, cited in Hudde’s letter to Christiaan Huygens, 5 April 1665. See also Huygens’ note, 10 April 1665. Huygens,
Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 5 (The Hague, 1893), letters no. 1375, 1384.
38
Spinoza to Henry Oldenburg, 20 November 1665. Barbone, Spinoza letters (n. 34), 195–6.
39
Hudde to Huygens, 5 April 1665 (n. 37); Spinoza to Henry Oldenburg, May 1665. Ibidem, p. 175.
40
R. Hooke, Micrographia, or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and
inquiries thereupon (London 1665), preface, p. xxii. A single lens microscope already seems to have been made in London in
the spring of 1655. At least Samuel Hartlib mentioned in his diary ‘a Spectacle-Maker in the Minories, a friend of Mr Haacks’,
who made ‘a Singular Microscope which undertakes to performe more then ever hath beene done’. The ‘Minories’ is the
name of a street in London, close to the Tower. Hartlib, Ephemerides, part 2, February-April 1655 (29/5/20A).
41
R. Hooke, ‘Microscopium, or some new discoveries made with and concerning microscopes’ [comments on two letters by Leeu-
wenhoek], in: the same, Lectures and Collections (London: J. Martyn, 1678), pp. 81–104 (p. 96). Hooke later collected these lectures
in his Lectiones Cutlerianae (London 1679).
42
Allan Chapman, England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution (Bristol, 2005), p. 59.
43
In 1678 Hooke published an improved variant of this method, resulting in a more spherical globule. Cf. Hooke, ‘Microscopium’ (n.
41), p. 97; Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2), pp. 161–2; Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), pp. 29–30.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 7

surfaces, whereas with a needle some contamination and disfiguring of the glass surface was almost
unavoidable.44
Nicolaas Hartsoeker, a Dutch instrument maker who from the late 1670s gained quite some fame
for his own single lens microscopes, used a similar method: melting a fine glass rod into a small
spherical bulb over a lamp or a candle. Hartsoeker also acknowledged Hudde as the original inven-
tor, but from his remark we also learn that it was Leeuwenhoek who added a crucial novelty to the
way the single lens microscope had to be used, that is in front of the eye in such a way that daylight
could pass through the object:
The mayor Hudde, this great and famous mathematician, showed me shortly before his death a machine that he
had invented over 40 years ago [thus around 1663], to use glass balls, by passing enough light between the glass
and the object, but as it appeared impossible, it [= the instrument] was almost not used. Is it not very surprising,
said the great man, that we have never had enough sense to use those beads to observe the small objects against
the daylight, which Mr. Leeuwenhoek, a man without study and genius, had to teach us’.45

In 1680 Stephen Blankaart published Hudde’s method (which he then falsely ascribed to Hartsoeker)
in the first volume of his newly founded medical journal Collectanea medico-physica.46 Clearly at that
time the extreme magnifying quality of small glass beads was widely known in the Dutch Republic.47

4. Leeuwenhoek’s tiny magnifying glasses

From what we now know, we may conclude that around 1660 Leeuwenhoek must have heard of
Hudde’s invention, after which moment he embarked on that path for his first investigations. But
in the next decade, he followed his own – different – path. For in 1699 Leeuwenhoek wrote:
although glasses of extreme smallness were made by me already about 40 years ago, they are seldom used by me.
In my opinion they are not suitable for making important discoveries; for this purpose those which have been
ground with a bigger diameter are [better] suited.48

At some point Leeuwenhoek must have realised that the magnifying effect of the glass beads was
dependent only on their shape and that this effect could also be achieved by old-fashioned lens grind-
ing, a method well known in 17th-century Delft.49 Moreover, by moving away from the spherical
shape, the field of view in the focus area could be enhanced. According to Zacharias von Uffenbach,
who left us a detailed report of his visit to Leeuwenhoek in 1710, the Delft microscopist told him that
all his lenses were ground on both sides in a double-convex form from a larger piece of glass, and that
he despised ‘blown’ glasses.50 With this last remark Leeuwenhoek must have referred to Hudde’s
44
Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2); idem, ‘The microscopes’, p. 31.
45
‘M. le Bourguemestre Hudde, ce grand & fameux mathématicien, me fit voir peu de temps avant sa mort une machine, qu’il avoit
inventée depuis plus de 40 ans, pour se servir de petites boules de verre, en faisant passer assés de lumiere entre le verre &
l’objet, mais comme cela étoit impossible, elle ne servoit presque de rien. N’est il pas bien surprenant, me dit ce grand
homme, que nous n’ayons jamais eu asses d’esprit de nous servir de ces boules pour voir ce petits objets contre le jour, &
qu’un homme sans etude & sans genie comme M. Leeuwenhoek ait du nous l’apprendre’. Nicolas Hartsoeker, ‘Extrait critique
des lettres de M. Leeuwenhoek’, in: idem, Cours de physique, [ … ] et d’un extrait critique des lettres de M. Leeuwenhoek (Amster-
dam, 1730), pp. 44–5. The young Nicolaas Hartsoeker paid a visit to Leeuwenhoek in the years 1674-1677, when he was a student
at Leiden University. Cf. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 196 [letter dated 17 December 1698, note 5].
46
S. Blankaart, ‘Maniere van vergrootglaazen by de heer Nicolaas Hartsoker <sic!> gevonden’, Collectanea medico-physica, oft Hol-
lands jaar-register der genees- en natuur-kundige aanmerkingen van gantsch Europa 1 (Amsterdam, 1680), pp. 200–1. See: https://
archive.org/stream/collectaneamedic00blan#page/200/mode/2up (retrieved October 2014).
47
From 1680 onwards the Middelburg physician Anthony de Heyde (or ‘De Heide’) also used the microscope for several discoveries.
Cf. H.J. Zuidervaart, ‘Het in 1658 opgerichte theatrum anatomicum te Middelburg. Een medisch-wetenschappelijk & cultureel
convergentiepunt in een vroege stedelijke context’, Archief. Mededelingen van het Koninklijk Zeeuwsch Genootschap der
Wetenschappen (2009), pp. 73–140 (pp. 103–4).
48
‘Wat mij belangt, al hoe wel ze bij mij al ontrent 40. jaren geleden van een ongemene kleijnheijt zijn gemaakt, zoo zijn ze bij mij
weijnig in gebruijk, [en] ze dienen na mijn oordeel niet, om eerste ontdekkingen te doen en daar toe sijn bequaam, die geene,
die uijt een grooter diameter sijn gesleepen’. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 200 [letter dated 9 June 1699].
49
Zuidervaart & Rijks, ‘Most rare workmen’ (n. 8).
50
‘As we marvelled at this large store, we asked him whether he never sold any, as we would gladly have possessed some ourselves.
But he said no; he would sell none in his lifetime. He was also very secret about his work, and how he did it. But we drew one
thing and another out of him with all manner of questions. Thus, when we asked him whether all these microscopia were
8 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

method, for a few moments later – and seemingly contradictory to what he said before – Uffenbach
wrote: ‘Mr. Leeuwenhoek assured us that he had succeeded, after ten years’ exercise, in learning how
to blow a serviceable kind of glasses which were not round’.51
What to make of this? Apparently, Leeuwenhoek made his first lenses according to Hudde’s
method. Then, in – or shortly before – 1673, he developed his own method of grinding very
small double-convex lenses, which he mounted between two metal plates, riveted together. Leeu-
wenhoek also must have used some kind of stand to hold his microscope, in order to have his
hands free, but no particulars of this device are known. It was with these microscopes that he
acquired his fame, which in 1680 brought him election as Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Finally, shortly before the turn of the century, he must have succeeded in making lenses by a gen-
uine glass-blowing technique, thus further enhancing the resolving power of his microscopes (as will
be explained below).
One remaining specimen of the last technique was recognized in the early 1980s by the optician
Jan van Zuylen, who thoroughly investigated the optical properties of the small group of (then) nine
preserved Leeuwenhoek microscopes. Van Zuylen concluded that Leeuwenhoek had informed
Uffenbach correctly. Indeed all of the preserved microscope lenses were ground and polished,
with the exception of one, the lens with the best known resolving power. This concerned the micro-
scope in the Utrecht University Museum.52 After an extensive investigation (and an imitation of the
required glass-blowing procedures) Van Zuylen concluded decisively that this lens was made by
blowing a glass bulb, using ‘a piece of thin-walled tube’ of about 10–20 mm diameter. The apex
of this bulb was made into a lens by manipulating the glass through continuous and repeated heating.
According to Van Zuylen:
A good glass blower can give the lens a variety of curvatures, from about equiconvex to nearly planoconvex. The
curvature of each of the surfaces of the lens is strongest at the centre, gradually getting weaker at the outer
zones, and ending in the general shape of the bulb’s surface (Figure 1).53

Measurements confirmed for Van Zuylen that the Utrecht Leeuwenhoek lens has a non-spherical
shape, and that the radius of curvature increases to its margin. He further commented:
It is nearly impossible to generate such a surface by polishing, but it is just the shape which can be expected
when the lens is blown. It seems probable that Leeuwenhoek by preference used this method of blowing for
making high-power lenses. For low-power lenses, grinding and polishing was much more suitable, as the selec-
tion of a good piece of glass gave no problems, and working it was a straightforward process with an excellent
chance of achieving a good result.54

Van Zuylen further commented on Hudde’s earlier method:

It is fairly certain that Leeuwenhoek only knew of glass spheres made by this tricky method, which gives less
perfect spheres as a result of interference by the needle-point on the heated glass, and is apt to contaminate the
glass surface by little scales of iron oxide. This may explain Leeuwenhoek’s contempt of blown lenses, and also
why he tried to find a method that gives a better shape and does not contaminate the glass.55

identical? He said they were all ground in the same grinding-cup, but nevertheless there was a difference between the various
lenses. [ … ] When we further inquired of Mr. Leeuwenhoek whether he ground all his lenses, and did not blow any, he denied
this, but displayed great contempt for the blown glasses. He pointed out to us how thin his microscopia were, compared with
others, and how close together the laminae were between which the lens lay, so that no spherical glass could be thus mounted;
all his lenses being ground, contrariwise, convex on both sides’. English translation in Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), pp. 68–9. The
original text was published in German in: Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und
Engeland, vol 3 (Ulm 1753), pp. 349–60.
51
Ibidem.
52
See also: P.H. van Cittert, ‘The van Leeuwenhoek microscope in possession of the University of Utrecht’, Proceedings of the Section
of Sciences. Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 35 (1932), 1062–3; 36 (1933), 194–6; 37 (1934), 290–4.
53
Van Zuylen, ‘The microscopes’ (n. 2), p. 46.
54
Ibidem, p. 47.
55
Ibidem.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 9

Figure 1. Van Zuylen’s blown glass bulb with a lens at its apex ‘which is not round’. Photo taken from Van Zuylen (1982).

5. A new list of Leeuwenhoek’s scientific tools and instruments

This last remark came into our minds when we came across an overlooked archival document: a list
of scientific instruments in the inventory of the estate of Leeuwenhoek’s daughter Maria (1656–
1745). The list was compiled by notary Joris Geesteranus in the house Het Gulden Hoofd (‘the golden
head’) on the Hippolytusbuurt shortly after her death.56 Remarkably this list has not been commen-
ted upon before, although the inventory was found and even transcribed in 1933. Petra Beydals, then
a Delft archivist, even announced she would publish this list, but as she changed jobs shortly there-
after, this never happened.57 In 1958 Mrs. De Loos-Haaxman, a distant relative of Leeuwenhoek, also
mentioned the inventory in a genealogical paper on Delft families,58 but she only concluded from it
that Maria had been a business woman, who had continued her father’s textile trade.59 The inventory
gives an elaborate description of the contents of Maria’s house: the same house in which she was
born and had lived with her father until his last days. So many goods listed in the house were essen-
tially material remains of her father. This is especially the case with paragraphs 78 and 79 of the list:
the microscopes and scientific instruments (listed as ‘rarities’; see Appendix A).
Very interesting is the collection of ‘rarities’, because it presents 42 tools and scientific instru-
ments, which without doubt belonged to Maria’s father. Most surprising are the instruments listed
at the beginning. Here three burning mirrors (below, nos. 1–3) and one burning glass (no. 7) are
mentioned, the first mirror (of glass) being ‘extraordinarily large’. This is really stunning infor-
mation, which provides new insight into Leeuwenhoek’s working method regarding the production
of his lenses. Towards the end of the 17thcentury large burning mirrors and glasses were constructed
and sold with the purpose of producing very high temperatures by bringing the sun’s rays to a
focus.60 This method had the advantage over peat furnaces (which were the usual source of heat
in those days) because there was no risk of introducing fumes or ash into the heated specimen.
When one used these large burning devices for glass-blowing, there was less risk of contamination.
Such large burning mirrors were introduced in the Netherlands in the mid-1690s, when the Ger-
man scholar Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus sold these instruments through the mediation of
his Amsterdam commissioner Ameldonk Blok.61 The Boekzaal van Europe, a Dutch scholarly

56
Delft city archive, NA inv. 2791, fol. 30.
57
Petra Beydals, ‘Leeuwenhoeck-brief no. 27, en andere gegevens’, Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 77-I (1933), 522–7
(p. 522).
58
J. de Loos-Haaxman, ‘Delftse burgers’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw, 75:4 (1958), 122–41.
59
In fact Maria’s grandfather, Elias de Meij (†1646), already had been a textile merchant. He came from Norwich (England), living in
Delft at least since 1632. After his marriage in 1654 with Barbara de Meij, Anthony Leeuwenhoek probably took on this business
from Elias’s widow, Maria Virlin (also known as Vierlincx or Viruli).
60
W.A. Smeaton, ‘Some large Burning Lenses and their Use by Eighteenth-Century French and British Chemists’, Annals of Science,
44 ( 1987), 265–76.
61
R. Vermij, ‘De Nederlandse vriendenkring van E.W. von Tschirnhaus’, Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis der geneeskunde, natuurwe-
tenschappen, wiskunde en techniek, 11 (1988), 153–178 (p. 167).
10 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

journal, published in 1695 an elaborate description of these large burning glasses. It was in this same
journal, edited by Leeuwenhoek’s friend Pieter Rabus, that the Delft microscopist also published
some of his letters, even in that very year.62 So, without doubt Leeuwenhoek read the notice of
these large burning mirrors, and he must have grasped immediately the importance of these tools
for his own lens making.63 Moreover, from Leeuwenhoek’s letters we know that in the summer of
1695 he indeed was busy with experiments involving glass blowing.64 In short, this inventory
suggests that Leeuwenhoek changed his working method for the production of some of his lenses
in the late 1690s.
The inventory also presents evidence of Leeuwenhoek’s earlier methods of glass manipulation,
such as ‘some small instruments for grinding glasses’ (no. 13). The lathe he used for the grinding
and polishing of his lenses is also listed (no. 23). Leeuwenhoek mentioned this tool in his letter of
9 October 1676, when he wrote:
My study stands towards the north east, is in my front room partitioned off with pine wainscot, fitted very clo-
sely together, having no other opening than one hole of an inch and a half high, and eight inches long,
through which the wooden spring of my lathe passes, furnished towards the street with four windowpanes, of
which the bottom two can be opened from the inside, and on the outside with two wooden shutters, closed at
night, made in such a way that there hardly comes in any air from the outside.65

Interesting is also the ‘table with a pair of bellows’ (no. 24) that Leeuwenhoek must have used in
combination with a furnace for his smithery. The inventory mentions another ‘pair of bellows’
with a swavelstokbak (a box of matchsticks) ‘in ’t Agterhuijsje’ (the small shed at the rear). In
1689 Leeuwenhoek explained in one of his letters that, after he had witnessed a silversmith at
work, he constructed most of the silver or brass parts of his microscopes by himself.66 However,
punched marks on some of the preserved Leeuwenhoek microscopes suggest that at least some of
the raw metal sheets were delivered by a copper or silversmith.67 The inventory lists also a case
with some raw materials for this metalwork: a box with pieces of silver and gold (no. 21). In 1699
Leeuwenhoek displayed real contentment with his own work, when he wrote: ‘my equipment is
mounted in such a way that the goldsmiths attest that they cannot emulate me’.68 That not everyone

62
J. de Vet, ‘Von Tschirnhaus’, in: H. Bots (ed.), Pieter Rabus en de boekzaal van Europe 1692-1702 (Amsterdam, 1974), pp. 279–87.
The description of Tschirnhaus’ large burning mirror is published in De Boekzaal van Europe (1695), p. 472. For Leeuwenhoek’s
letter to Pieter Rabus, the editor of the Boekzaal, see the September-October issue (1695), pp. 258–61. Two years later, in the
issue of November/December 1697, Rabus published a Dutch translation of a tract on these large burning devices, originally
published by Tschirnhaus in the Acta Eruditorum (1687), but which text was also published separately in German in 1697.
63
In 1699 Leeuwenhoek sent one letter to Tschirnhaus (Alle de Brieven, (n. 11), no. 205). Unfortunately in this letter he did not dis-
cuss burning glasses.
64
Leeuwenhoek reported on 18 August 1695, that he acquired his glass blowing skills from viewing an itinerant glass blower at
work during an annual fair in Delft. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 154.
65
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 26 [letter dated 9 October 1676]: ‘Nota mijn comptoir staet tegen het noort oosten, is op
mijn voor camer met greijnen hout seer digt in een gevoegt, afgeschooten, hebbende geen andere opening als een gath van 1½
duijm hoog, en 8 duijm langh, daer de houte veer van mijn draijbank doorgaet, versien, voor aen straet met 4 vengsters, waer van
de onderste twee van binnen connen opgaen, en van buijten met 2 houte vensters, des nagts werden toegeslooten, soo datter
van buijtenen, weijnig, of geen lugt incomt, … ’.
66
Ibidem, no. 113 [letter dated 12 January 1689]: ‘Dog men moet weten, dat ik in geen konsten ben onderwesen, daar toe men
hamer of vijl gebruijkt, als alleen dat ik heb gesien, hoe men het staal hard en tempert, en een dril maakt, waar mede men een
gat in ijser, kooper of silver drilt. Hoe en waar mede een silver-smit, sijn silver aan een soudeert. Dit gesien hebbende, heb ik mijn
selven soo verre geoeffent, dat ik sedert veel jaren mijn gereedschap hebbe gemaakt, het welke ik in verscheijde saken hebbe
van noode gehad. En dus is het, dat het geene dat ik tot mijn gebruijk van noode hebbe, alleen maar uijt den rouwe bij mij
gemaakt werd’.
67
Fournier mentions three microscopes punched with one or two arrows and one microscope marked with a ‘3’. These marks
resemble those used on surgical instruments, which were usually made by local blacksmiths. In that respect it is noteworthy
that at the auction of 1747 nine lots were bought by Hendrick Verbrugge (1705-1785), a Delft coppersmith, whose coat-of-
arms contains three arrows. He was the apprentice and successor of Wouter Rotshoek (†1694) and his son Cornelis (who left
the profession in 1727). Their coat-of-arms contains a fishhook, resembling the marking ‘3’. Cf. and http://www.
heraldischedatabank.nl; Fournier, ‘Een microscoop’ (n. 12), pp. 70–1 and C.S. Groos, Early Surgical Instruments. A Descriptive Cat-
alogue (Leiden, 2004), p. 16.
68
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 200 [letter dated 9 June 1699]: ‘Myn werktuygen syn soo toegestelt, dat werkbasen in ’t
Gout seggen, my niet te sullen nawerken’.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 11

shared his opinion can be read in the travel journal of Uffenbach, who testified in 1710 that
Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes ‘are simple and badly worked, and for the most part roughly
fashioned; even the silver not being filed smooth in a single one of them’.69 Nonetheless,
Leeuwenhoek employed this craft also on other objects. In his will of 1719, he bequeathed
a silver plate and two candlesticks made by himself from silver that he personally had refined
from the ore.70
Other instruments listed in the inventory give testimony about Leeuwenhoek’s professional life as
a surveyor (a profession for which he was qualified in 1669, shortly after his visit to England) and as a
wine gauger (a profession that he entered in 1679). The list for instance describes his surveying chain
‘in twenty parts’ (no. 14), with a total length of ‘5 roeden’ (= 18.8 m), as well as an astrolabe with a
compass in the shape of the half of a circle (no. 27). This was in fact a graphometer or semicircle: the
half of a so-called ‘Dutch circle’, at that time the standard surveying device in Holland.71 Leeuwen-
hoek could have used both devices in the summer of 1674, when most likely he was on a surveying
trip with his elder colleague Jacob Spoors, measuring the surroundings of the ‘Berkelse Meer’.72 It
was in water from this very lake that Leeuwenhoek first observed microbes (diertgens or ‘little ani-
mals’).73 Spoors could even have stimulated Leeuwenhoek in this activity, for Spoors’ interest in
natural philosophy, as well as well as in optics, is well documented.74 Two years later Leeuwenhoek
probably assisted Spoors with his measurements for the Kaart Figuratief.75 Spoors’ team of surveyors
measured that year every parcel of land in the city with a chain similar to the one listed in Leeuwen-
hoek’s daughter’s inventory. In 1715 Leeuwenhoek recalled that both he and Spoors had measured
the height of one of the Delft church towers, each with his own quadrant.76 This must have been the
‘brass quadrant’ mentioned under no. 40. The three transportoria (protractors) of 3½, 4 and 10
inches in diameter (nos. 30–32), as well as a larger and a smaller aap (better known as a ‘pantograph’,
nos. 35–36) and some brass rulers and a winkelhaak (a carpenter’s square, no. 31) were undoubtedly
used for the drawing of maps on the basis of his surveying measurements. Such instruments were all
available from the mathematical instrument makers Anthoni Sneewins (who worked in Delft
between 1642 and 1681) and his son Willem Sneewins, who succeeded his father and worked in
Delft under his own name until 1710.77
Also present on the list are several rods with a graduated scale, used for Leeuwenhoek’s job as a
gauger of wine casks. These peylstokken (nos. 17–20) to measure liquids in barrels were the finest,
made from ebony with silver knobs and bands. In his letters Leeuwenhoek sometimes referred to
other brass rules with a graduated scale (nos. 37 and 38), for instance in 1679 when he tried to
measure the diameter of a number of hairs from his wig, in order to use this as a unit of measurement
in his microscopic studies.78

69
Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), p. 69. See also: Van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microscopen’ (n. 2), p. 4574: ‘Over het algemeen zijn de
mij bekende exemplaren uit instrumentmakersoogpunt vrij ruw afgewerkt en kan men de vijlstreken op het koper duidelijk
waarnemen’.
70
‘Een silver schenktaljoor, sijnde ten delen verguld, alsmede twee silveren kandelaaren bij den heer testateur gedaan maaken van
het silver, dat door hem selffs uyt minerael is gearbeyt’. P. Beydals, ‘Twee testamenten van Antoni Van Leeuwenhoeck’, Neder-
landsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 77-I (1933), 1021–33 (p. 1024).
71
H.C. Pouls, De landmeter Jan Pietersz. Dou en de Hollandse Cirkel (Delft, 2004).
72
Spoors’ map, finished in June 1675, but probably surveyed in the previous summer, is still preserved in the Delft city archive, OAD
3184/2. See: C.G.D. de Wilt, Delflands kaarten belicht (Hilversum, 2000), pp. 122–3.
73
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 11 [letter dated 7 September 1674].
74
Zuidervaart & Rijks, ‘Most rare workmen’ (n. 8).
75
H.L. Houtzager (et al.), De Kaart Figuratief van Delft (Rijswijk, 1997).
76
This height was a relevant quantity, necessary to draw this tower correctly, considering the bird’s-eye view used in this large wall
map of Delft. See Leeuwenhoek, Sendbrieven (1718), letter no. IV (14 March 1713), p. 43.
77
Anthoni Sneewins’ brothers Hendrick and Johannes Sneewins worked as mathematical instrument makers in respectively Leiden
and Utrecht. See the website Scientific Instrument Makers in the Netherlands, on: http://www.dwc.knaw.nl. See also: Maria Roo-
seboom, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der instrumentmakerskunst in de noordelijke Nederlanden (Leiden 1950), pp. 123–5.
78
Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 47 [letter dated 20 May 1679]; See also Sendbrieven, letter no. XXVIII (28 September
1716) and plate facing p. 271.
12 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

A special category is formed by the scientific instruments required for the self-fashioning of a
learned gentleman, such as a pair of large globes (no. 9), a telescope with drawtubes (no. 10),79 a
pocket sundial with a date indicator (no. 28), two regular low-power magnifying glasses (nos. 4
and 5) and some meteorological instruments, such as two weather glasses (no. 6) and a barometer
(no. 8). This last instrument was probably constructed by Leeuwenhoek himself. In 1700, in one of
his letters, Leeuwenhoek noted that he made a barometer in the early 1670s, probably from blown
tubes he had ordered in Liège and ’s-Hertogenbosch.80 Whether the two magnetic compasses (nos.
11 and 12) were used for the experiments with fragmented magnets, about which Leeuwenhoek
reported in 1697 to the Royal Society, will remain a mystery,81 just as what he did with the three
prisms on the list (nos. 42 and 43). Was Leeuwenhoek aware of Isaac Newton’s experimentum cruces?
In his letters he never mentions a prism, but it is conceivable that the refraction of light, as an impor-
tant optical phenomenon, would have interested him.
Finally some intriguing items in the list of tools and instruments are twelve engraved copper
plates: eleven larger ones and one smaller (nos. 15 and 16). Leeuwenhoek mentioned these plates
in his Sendbrieven of 1718, when he revealed his intention to publish ‘more than a hundred letters’
after his death as the reason why he had ordered eleven plates to be cut in copper.82 Unfortunately
this never happened. Leeuwenhoek apparently got embroiled with his Delft publisher Adriaan
Beman, for in Leeuwenhoek’s will of 17 November 1721 he included the following phrase:
Also we desire that one will lock in a chest or a suitcase all papers and letters which are not printed, [ … ] con-
cerning my discoveries, accompanied by ten engraved copper plates, belonging to some unpublished letters, for
which five hundred guilders has been paid, with the translation into Latin, costing hundred seventy guilders,
and that as long as the crook83Adriaan Beman is alive, it is not allowed that the letters that have been written
afterwards, will be published by his son or next of kin.84

Eventually this resulted in a lost scientific legacy. Leeuwenhoek’s last work never saw the printing
press. The last time that the copper plates and the accompanying manuscripts were mentioned is
in May 1747.85 At the end of the printed catalogue of the auction of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes,
the following remark can be found:
In the estate of the late Miss Maria van Leeuwenhoek has been found some left-behind manuscripts or letters
from her father, Mr. Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, which his honour wrote during his life and arranged in a neat
and good order, destined to be printed as a continuation to his preceding published letters; All the plates,
belonging to this work are present, and already engraved in copper, as are the Latin translations of the letters.
Someone willing to buy this work, in order to print this as a continuation to his already published letters, can
address himself to the executors of the estate, named before.86

79
The use of a Verrekyker (‘telescope’) with four glasses in combination with a level, used for the determination of the fall of water, is
discussed in Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 229 [letter dated 26 August 1701].
80
Ibidem, no. 217 [letter dated 1700]; idem, no. 229 [letter dated 26 August 1701].
81
Ibidem, no. 184 [letter dated 5 April 1697].
82
Leeuwenhoek, Sendbrieven (1718), p. 168 [letter XVII, dated 28 September 1715].
83
Crossed out in the original document. At that time Adriaan Beman was accused of charging far too high fees for his printing
commissioned by the private Delft Assurance Company. See: NA Delft inv. 2590F, fol. 294, 28 August 1721 (Willem Vlaardinger-
wout, notary).
84
‘Ook is ons begeerte dat men in een kist ofte koffer sal opsluyten alle de ongedrukte schriften ende brieven, bij mij Leeuwenhoek
sijn geschreven, rakende mijne ontdekkinge, nevens tien gesnede koopere plaaten, behoorende tot eenige ongedrukte brieven,
waarvoor men seer na vijfhondert gulden heeft betaelt alsmede de vertaling in ’t Latijn, daar men een hondert ende seventig
guldens voor betaalt heeft ende dat soo lange als den schelm Adriaan Beman in ’t leven is, ende en sullen die brieven ende die
naderhand nog geschreven sijn, ook niet mogen gedrukt werden bij desselfs soon ofte nabestaande’. Delft city archive, NA Delft
inv. 2415J, fol. 596. 30 November 1721 (Jan de Bries, notary).
85
These unpublished papers and copper plates are also mentioned in the division of the Leeuwenhoek estate, d.d. 15 September
1746, fol. 187vs: ‘Het cabinet van vergrootglaasen, mitsgaders de nog ongedrukte brieven met de vertaaling daarvan in ’t Latijn,
leggende in een houte doos, met 11 groote en 1 kleijne kopere plaat daartoe, met het silvere plaatje, sijnde alsnog onverkogt
gebleeven’ [ … ]; fol. 224: ‘zijnde dezelve in bewaring genomen bij Mr. Willem van der Lely’. Delft city archive, NA Delft, inv.
2792D (Joris Geesteranus, notary).
86
‘In den Boedel van wylen Juffr. Maria van Leeuwenhoek zyn gevonden eenige nagelate manuscripten of Brieven van haar vader,
den Heer Anth: van Leeuwenhoek, dewelke door zyn Ed: in deszelfs Leven geschreven en in eene nette en goede ordre geschikt
zyn, om als een vervolg op zyne voorgaande uitgegeve Brieven gedrukt te konnen werden; Alle de Platen daar toe behoorende,
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 13

6. Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes in Maria’s inventory

The most important component of Maria van Leeuwenhoek’s estate was, of course, her father’s col-
lection of microscopes, stored in a large cabinet with Japanese lacquer. According to the inventory
this impressive piece of furniture stood in a room in the voorhuijs (‘front of the house’). Its con-
tents, the vergrootglazen (‘magnifying glasses’), were listed together in a separate paragraph (§ 78).
Maria’s inventory describes three microscopes mounted in gold, 143 made of silver and 125 made
of brass. Further there were 23 microscopes attached to glass tubes: magnifying devices for aquatic
usage, invented by Leeuwenhoek sometime before 1678.87 In total this makes 294 microscopes.
However, the inventory also mentions four boxes containing incomplete microscopes ‘with or
without glasses’. For that reason, the catalogue of the auction of these microscopes (held two
years later on 29 May 1747 in the main room of St. Luke’s guild in Delft), presents many more
instruments.88 The different types of microscopes mentioned in this catalogue were scrupulously
studied by Van Seters.89 He distinguished 17 variations of the mounting of Leeuwenhoek’s tiny
lenses (Figure 2). However, these variations can be categorized into three types of magnifying
instruments:

(1). Several variations of the well-known single lens microscope, differing from each other only by:
[a] the materials used (gold, silver or brass); [b] the number of lenses (1–3), or [c] the number of
pins for the attachment of objects. Within this category there were three glasses mounted in
gold, 145 mounted in silver, four with both silver and brass parts, and 96 mounted in brass,
adding up to a total of 248 single lens microscopes.
(2). Aquatic microscopes with glass tubes attached. In this category there were [a] two rather large
brass instruments used for the study of the blood circulation in fish (Vischkijkers). This model
was invented and made by Leeuwenhoek not long before 1710; [b] eleven silver microscopes for
the observation of oysters (Oesterkijkers), first mentioned in 1695, and [c] ten so-called Aalk-
ijkers (‘eel viewers’), for other specimens preserved in liquids, designed around 1689 (Figure
3, no. 10). The latter were made from silver as well as brass.90
(3). Small magnifying glasses without a holder for microscopic objects: [a] 88 pieces mounted in a
brass housing with a concave basin attached to it (Figure 3, nos. 11 and 12). In 1743 Henry
Baker erroneously wrote about this magnifying glass that Leeuwenhoek was a precurseur of
Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn, who was credited for the introduction of a concave mirror
into microscopy for a better illumination of the object. But Leeuwenhoek used the basin
towards the eye, not towards the object, as Lieberkühn did.91 [b] Finally the auction catalogue
listed 172 simple lenses, mounted between two small copper plates, all sets but one packed by
the dozen.

zyn daarby, en reeds in ’t koper gegraveert, zoo als ook de Latynsche vertaling van voorsz. Brieven. Iemand genegen zynde, dit
werk te kopen, om het als een Vervolg op zyne reeds uitgevene Brieven te laten drukken, kan zich addresseeren aan de Exe-
cuteurs van de voorsz. Boedel’. Adriaan Rees, Catalogus van het vermaarde cabinet van vergrootglasen, met zeer veel moeite,
en kosten in veele jaren geïnventeert, gemaakt, en nagelaten door wylen den heer Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (Delft: R. Boitet,
1747). Utrecht University Library, MAG: Q OCT 1317, online: http://hdl.handle.net/1874/261962.
87
Jan Swammerdam to Melchisedec Thévenot, 28 April 1678: ‘De eerste die de Tubulus vitreus oit gebruykt heeft is een Hollander
die te Delft woont, Leeuwenhoek genaamt’ (‘The first to use a Tubulus vitreous was a Dutchman who lives in Delft, called Leeu-
wenhoek’). Cf. G.A. Lindeboom (ed.), The letters of Jan Swammerdam to Melchisedec Thévenot, with English translation and a bio-
graphical sketch (Amsterdam, 1975).
88
Rees, Catalogus (n. 86). See also P. Harting, Het Mikroskoop, vol. 3 (Utrecht, 1850), pp. 42–3.
89
Van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microscopen’ (n. 2). See also his later amendation ‘Leeuwenhoeks aalkijker-modellen’, Nederlands
Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 100:1 (1956), pp. 175–7.
90
Leeuwenhoek himself presented particulars about the construction of these ‘aalkijkers’ in his letter of 12 January 1689. Leeuwen-
hoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 113.
91
Cf. Henry Baker, Het microscoop gemakkelijk gemaakt (Amsterdam, 1744), p. 20, note and Van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microsco-
pen’ (n. 2).
14 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

Figure 2. Van Seters’ reconstruction of Leeuwenhoek’s microscope types, with the available numbers in 1747. First row: the single
lens microscope, made from different materials and in several settings. Second row: the hand loupes (88), the brass ‘Oesterkijkers’
(11), and the lenses fitted in brass (172). Third row: the brass ‘Vischkijkers’ (2), and different models of the ‘Aalkijker’. From: Van
Seters (1933).

In summary, the number of magnifying glasses in the 1747 auction adds up to 531. Together with a
gift of two specimens to Queen Mary,92 the wife of the Dutch stadtholder (and later English king)
William III, and with the 26 microscopes bequeathed in 1723 to the Royal Society, the total number
of documented Leeuwenhoek lenses comes to 559 glasses: an average of almost one per month for
50 years.

7. Leeuwenhoek’s usage and storage of his microscopes

Why did Leeuwenhoek make that many microscopes? This very question was also on the mind of
Baron von Uffenbach when he visited Leeuwenhoek in 1710. But in his travel journal Uffenbach
noted only that he withheld this question for he thought that the famous microscopist would give
him a ‘Dutch answer’, that is: an evasive answer.93 However, with his own eyes he saw Leeuwen-
hoek’s cabinet, ‘in which he had at least a dozen little lacquered boxes, and in these quite a hundred
and fifty of the little cases before mentioned, in each of which there lay two microscopes of the small
sort’.94 In 1724 Martin Folkes, the president of the Royal Society, described one of these little black
lacquered and gilded boxes, which Leeuwenhoek’s daughter Maria presented to this distinguished
institution after her father’s death. Folkes noted that in the drawers were ‘13 little boxes or cases,
each containing two microscopes, [ … ] each microscope having had an object placed before it’.95

92
Folkes, ‘Some account of Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s curious microscopes’ (n. 2), pp. 450–1.
93
Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), p. 69.
94
Ibidem, p. 67.
95
Folkes, ‘Some account’ (n. 2). See also Leeuwenhoek’s own description of this very cabinet in Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), p. 96.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 15

Figure 3. Leeuwenhoek’s aquatic microscope (‘aalkijker’) (fig. 10) and his hand loupe with a convex basin to provide a dark screen
for the eye ball (figs. 11& 12). Engraving in Van Leeuwenhoek’s 66th ‘Missive’ (1689).

As Marc Ratcliff has emphasized, Leeuwenhoek almost always followed this method of fixing the
object to the instrument with his microscopic preparations.96
Firstly, this usage was a consequence of his microscopic design, in which any object had to be
attached to a pin in the focal plane of the lens, which pin could be adjusted by turning one or
two screws. However, as the focal length of a Leeuwenhoek lens is very short, the actual focussing
of an object is an extremely tedious affair.97 Then there was the problem of matching each specimen
with a proper microscope. After all, each lens was different. None had a calibrated magnification.
Some were too strong for what he wanted to observe; others too weak. This made an appropriate
match between a specimen and a lens as problematic as it was time consuming. In a way Leeuwen-
hoek ‘married’ a microscopic preparation and a lens in a process of trial and error.98 As Ratcliff
clearly has pointed out: by using one rigid structure, Leeuwenhoek combined the two different func-
tions of observing and mounting.99 In this concept it was essential to keep object and lens together.

96
Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), pp. 78–9.
97
P.H. van Cittert, Descriptive catalogue of the collection of microscopes of the Utrecht University Museum, with an introductory his-
torical survey of the resolving power of the microscope (Groningen, 1934), p. 14.
98
Comparable problems had to be tackled, for instance, by Galileo Galilei in combining two lenses in the construction of his first
telescopes, or by James Short in the combination of two mirrors used in his famous reflecting telescopes. Both scholars tested
numerous combinations in a process of trial and error. Short referred to this method as ‘marrying the specula’. Cf. Sven Dupré,
Galileo, the Telescope, and the Science of Optics in the Sixteenth Century (2002), pp. 10, 285 and Gerard L’Estrange Turner, ‘James
Short, F.R.S. and his Contributions to the Construction of Reflecting Telescopes’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London,
24 (1969), 91–108.
99
Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), pp. 78–9.
16 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

Figure 4. Frontispiece of the auction catalogue of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes (1747) by J.C. Philips. One of the putti in the fore-
ground holds a microscope with three lenses next to each other. Only two of these are mentioned in the catalogue. Against the left
side of the desk leans one of Leeuwenhoek’s aquatic microscopes. Two of these are also depicted in the right corner.

So, as Henry Baker already remarked in 1741, each object required its own microscope.100 As a con-
sequence, Leeuwenhoek needed to produce a huge number of microscopes. As a pleasant side-effect
of this practice, Leeuwenhoek could present his visitors with seven impressive cabinets with drawers,
eventually containing hundreds of specimens described in his various publications. Leeuwenhoek
used these cabinets in his self-fashioning as a scholar. They were all sold in the auction of 1747.
The large cabinet under a dome depicted in the frontispiece of the auction catalogue is probably a
fantasy, designed and engraved by the well-known Amsterdam artisan Jan Caspar Philips (1690–
1775) (Figure 4). Such exaggerations were rather common on such occasions.
The list of known high-ranking visitors to Leeuwenhoek’s collection is indeed impressive. During
his life Leeuwenhoek received in his humble house on the Delft Hippolytusbuurt several crowned
heads from all over Europe, for instance four kings (or future kings) of England (James II, Charles
II, Mary II and George I); August II, King of Poland; Fredrick I, King of Prussia; Anton Ulrich, Duke
of Brunswick; the Elector of the Palts, etc. Only the Russian Czar Peter the Great welcomed Leeu-
wenhoek elsewhere, in the newly established powder magazine of the States of Holland, just outside
Delft.101 No wonder that the sale of Leeuwenhoek’s famous collection was widely advertised months

100
Baker, ‘An Account of Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopes’ (n. 2), p. 507: ‘every microscope herein was engaged by an Object affixed
to it and thereby rendered useless for any other purpose’. Cf. Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), p. 78.
101
Haaxman, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), pp. 68–9. Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), p. 55.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 17

before the actual sale. Copies of the catalogue of microscopes could be obtained not only in the major
cities of the Dutch Republic, but also in Paris, London, Berlin and Leipzig.102

8. The auction of 1747

Maria’s executors, the Delft notary Willem van der Lely and his brother-in-law Gerard van Assen-
delft, were in charge of the liquidation of Maria’s assets. To begin with, on 25 August 1745, they sold
the house to Dirck Jansz Haaxman, one of the heirs, who would convert it into a bakery.103 Maria’s
textile business was probably auctioned in June 1746. That month, Adriaan Rees, a new Delft ven-
dumeester (‘auctioneer’), organized his first auction, containing an ‘extra large lot’ of sophisticated
textiles of high quality,104 sold together with a large contigent of furniture and an iron strongbox.105
Rees was an acquaintance of notary Joris Geesteranus, who made the inventory of Maria’s estate, so
evidently the lines of communication were kept short.106 Rees was also commissioned to organize a
public auction of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes, which pending its sale were kept at Van der Lely’s
house.
Other parts of the home contents were disposed of in a different way. Leeuwenhoek’s books and
surveying instruments, for instance, listed in Maria’s inventory as ‘een Boekekasje met eenige Boeken’
(a book case with some books), standing in the ‘Voorkamer’ (the front room), seem to have been sold
anonymously in a separate auction, held in the St. Luke’s guild room six days before Leeuwenhoek’s
microscopes would be sold there. Andries Voorstad, the auctioneer presiding over this sale, was a
retailer of books at the east side of the Hippolytusbuurt, diagonally opposite Leeuwenhoek’s
house. Unfortunately no catalogue has been preserved,107 but the various advertisements for this
small book auction (the first of its kind in Delft since 1744) states that this collection of ‘books
and mathematical instruments’ was the legacy of ‘a renowned enthusiast’.108
102
‘Op Maandag den 29 Mei 1747, zal in de stad DELFT op St. LUCAS GILDEKAMER publicq werden verkoft, het vermaarde KABINET van
VERGROOT-GLAZEN , meerendeels met Objecten, met groote moeite en kosten in veele jaren geïnventeert, gemaakt en nagelaten
door wylen den Heer ANTHONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK , in zyn Ed. Leven Lidt van de Koninglyke Societeit der Wetenschappen te London;
waarvan de catalogus, in ’t Latijn en Nederduitsch gedrukt, te bekomen is te Parys, by Sr. Michel Etienne David; London, John
Nource; Berlyn, E. de Boudeaux; Leipzich, Arkstee en Merkus; Groningen, W. Febens; Franeker, Blek; Harderwyk, Brinkink; Utrecht,
M. Visch; Leiden, S. Luchtmans; Amsterdam, J. ten Houten; Haarlem, M. van Leeuwen en J. van der Lee; ’s Hage, O. en P. van Thol;
Rotterdam, J.D. Beman; Dordrecht, J. van Braam; Middelburch, A. Meerkamp; en te Delft bij den vendumeester Adriaan van Rees’.
Advertisement in the Leydse Courant, 17, 19, 22, 24 & 26 May 1747; Hollandsche Historische Courant, 23 May 1747.
103
De Loos-Haaxman, ‘Delftse burgers’ (n. 58), p. 137. When Leeuwenhoek bought the house in 1655, it had been an apothecary.
104
‘Adriaan Rees, vendumeester te Delft, zal op den 13, 14 en 15 Juny 1746 op het Princenhof verkoopen, een extra groote party
Fyne Kust-Chitzen, Gingangen, Neusdoeken, Stichtermansayen, Dieshoekzaayen, Neteldoeken, en andere Lynwaten meer, als-
mede zal de gemelde Vendue-Meester daaraan volgende nog Verkoopen, geschilderde behangzels, Vloertapyten, Schilderyen,
Groote Spiegels, Staande en Hanghorologien, Hang-Lantaarnen met haar Tegenwigt, Spiegel-Balkers, Bedden met haar Toebe-
horen, Lit d’Anges, Fraaije Notebomen Kabinetten, Rustbanken, Moderne Stoelen, Notebome Laatafels, Yzere Geldkist, &c. &c.;
waarvan de Catalogus 6 dagen voor de Verkoping te bekoomen is [ … ] De Goederen kunnen Vrydag en Zaturdag voor de Ver-
kooping van een ider gezien werden’. Hollandsche Historische Courant, 11 June 1746.
105
Maria’s iron strongbox in the upper bedroom had contained almost 10,000 guilders in cash, in all kinds of domestic and foreign
currencies. De Loos-Haaxman, ‘Delftse burgers’ (n. 58), p. 136.
106
In October 1739 Joris Geesteranus had been a witness at the baptism of Rees’ first daughter. Rees’ job as an auctioneer was new.
Until 1745 Rees had been the kasteleijn (‘landlord’) of a Delft verbeterhuis: an institution for the adjustment of prisoners. In 1750
he would become a gaarder (‘collector of taxes’). Cf. Pieter Spierenburg, Zwarte schapen: losbollen, dronkaards en levensgenieters
in achttiende-eeuwse beterhuizen (Hilversum 1995), pp. 21–3; 139.
107
The collection of auction catalogues in the estate of the antiquarian Jacobus Koning, sold in 1833, mentions a ‘Cat. Libr. A. van
Leeuwenhoek, 1747’. This could refer to a handwritten note on the catalogue mentioned in the following footnote; it could also
be an entanglement with the microscope sale. Cf. Catalogus der Letterkundige Nalatenschap van wijlen Jacobus Koning, vol 2
(Amsterdam, 1833), no. 386.
108
‘Op Dingsdag den 23 Mey 1747, en volgende dagen, zal te Delft door Andries Voorstad, op St. Lucas Gildekamer, verkogt worden
een uitmuntende fraaye Verzameling extra wel geconditioneerde BOEKEN, waar in onder zeer veel andere capitale Werken uit-
munten het Groot Placaatboek van Cauw met het Register in 6 Fransse Banden, den Atlas van Blaau, zeer fraay afgezet, in 9 Atlas
Banden, leggende in een Nooteboom Kabinet, de Stedeboeken der Nederlanden, van Italien, Piemont, en Savoyen, enz., als mede
een fraaye party Musicq, Prenten, Mathematische Instrumenten, en Rariteiten: nagelaten door een voornaam Liefhebber: Waar
van de catalogus, in de meeste steden by de voornaamste Boekverkopers te bekomen zyn’. Advertisement in the Leydse Courant
5 , 10 & 17 May 1747; Amsterdamse Courant 11 & 16 May 1747; ’s Gravenhaegse courant, 8, 12 & 22 May 1747; Hollandsche His-
torische Courant, 16 May 1747 (together with the advertisement of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes).
18 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

Figure 5. Leeuwenhoek’s portrait in the auction catalogue of 1747.

In the meantime, Rees made considerable efforts to promote the microscope auction. He
composed an impressive catalogue with an engraved portrait of Leeuwenhoek (see Figure 5)
and the frontispiece cited above. This catalogue, of which three copies are preserved, confirms
Folkes’ observation that Leeuwenhoek combined all his objects with their own particular
microscope.
Remarkably, Rees made a very surprising move between the first announcement of the unique
Leeuwenhoek sale in February 1747 and the month of May, when it was advertised that the catalogue
was available. Apparently in response to the earlier announcements, he was offered a second collec-
tion of optical equipment, so Rees had grabbed this opportunity and added this collection to those of
the famous microscopist. In all main Dutch newspapers Rees announced to sell after the sale of Leeu-
wenhoek’s microscopes: ‘a collection of burning glasses, telescope objectives and microscopes’, made
by … … Hartsoeker! As Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656–1725) had been Leeuwenhoek’s most fierce
competitor, this was quite ironic.109 From Leeuwenhoek’s letters it is obvious that he despised Hart-
soeker.110 This feeling had been mutual: in Hartsoeker’s last book (published posthumously in 1730)
he was extremely critical of Leeuwenhoek for his presumed lack of any theoretical interpretation of
his microscopic findings.111 Nevertheless, posthumously their optical instruments were joined
together in the same auction room. Having said this, the origin as well as the contents of Hartsoeker’s
equipment remains in the dark. The catalogue mentioned in the newspaper advertisements has not

109
‘N.B. Immediaat na het verkopen van het bovenstaande KABINET van VERGROOT-GLAZEN , zullen door voorn. Venduemeester Adriaan
Rees ter plaatse voorsz. Ook verkoft worden de Brandspiegels, Objectief-Glazen, Microscopiën, enz. nagelaten door wylen den Heer
N. HARTSOEKER , in zyn leven mathematicus van zyn zeer doorluchtige hoogheid de Keurvorst van de Palts, Professor Honorair in de
Universiteit van Heydelberg, Lid van de Koninglyke Academien der Wetenschappen te Parijs en Berlijn, enz. waarvan de Cata-
logus in ’t Fransch en Nederduitsch gedrukt, binnen en buiten ślands ook by de bovengenoemde boekverkopers te bekomen
zyn’. Leydse Courant, 17, 19, 22, 24 & 26 May 1747; Hollandsche Historische Courant, 16 & 23 May 1747.
110
See for instance Leeuwenhoek, Sendbrieven (1718), letter no. XVII (28 September 1715), p. 170.
111
N. Hartsoeker, Cours de physique, [ … ] et d’un extrait critique des lettres de M. Leeuwenhoek (Amsterdam, 1730). See on the con-
troversy between Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker also Haaxman, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), pp. 48–50 and Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2),
p. 70.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 19

been preserved, and Hartsoeker’s main optical apparatus had already been sold at auction twenty
years before.112 Probably it concerned some remains preserved in Hartsoeker’s family.113

9. The dispersal of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes

What happened with all these microscopes that in 1747 flooded the market in one big wave? Fortu-
nately, the auctioneer’s copy of the catalogue has been preserved. This is why we know all the buyers
of Leeuwenhoek’s tiny microscopes. From the names noted in the catalogue it can be determined that
at the auction three of Leeuwenhoek’s heirs acquired 10 silver and 16 brass microscopes (mostly with
objects), and also three (out of nine) of the lacquered cabinets with drawers in which the microscopes
had been stored.114
In 1991 Hendrik Leonard Houtzager identified some of the buyers from the 1747 sale.115 We have
tried to extend this to all the names in the catalogue (see Appendix B). To our amazement almost all
buyers were local Delft citizens: notaries, medical doctors, surgeons, magistrates, a coppersmith,
some neighbours from the Hippolytusbuurt, etc. It seems that no foreigner attended the auction
and that only a handful of individual buyers came from places such as Rotterdam, Leiden, or Haar-
lem. Of them, the merchant Abraham Edens is the most eye-catching. He was a person with many
scientific contacts.116 It was Edens who in 1723 had brought Leeuwenhoek’s gift of 26 microscopes to
the Royal Society, in order to hand it over to its president, the honourable Isaac Newton.
Still, the total absence of buyers from abroad does raise the question whether there was any inter-
est from outside the Republic. Had the spread of the auction catalogue to places such as Berlin,
London and Paris been in vain? At first sight this indeed seems the case. But looking more
thoroughly, it appears that at the auction the most money was spent by two Delft notaries: Willem
Vlaardingerwout and Hendrick Halder. Together they bought 20% of the yield of the auction.
Neither notary is known for any interest in natural history, so it is an educated guess that they bought
at least some of these items on behalf of non-Delft residents.117 The same can be said for Adriaan
Rees, the Delft auctioneer (who bought the only sold gold microscope for 23 guilders and 15 stui-
vers), as well as the Haarlem bookseller Michiel van Leeuwen, one of the addresses where the cata-
logue could be obtained. Together they were good for another 11% of the yield. Thus, it can be
estimated that at least a third of the items went to bidders commissioned by unknown non-Delft
buyers, maybe even more. Edens, for instance, bought at the auction two silver microscopes, 15
brass ones (including one of the two available large Vischkijkers [‘fish viewers’]) and 12 unassembled
lenses. Later, in 1765, when his own cabinet of experimental philosophy was auctioned, he possessed
only three microscopes and eight glasses by Leeuwenhoek.118 So it is evident that Edens traded some
of the microscopes elsewhere, perhaps to England where most of his trade in tea and tobacco came
from. Other private buyers probably did the same. Perhaps also ‘De Heer Ouwens’, who was the third
substantial buyer at the Leeuwenhoek auction, paying 53.55 guilders (= 7.9%) to the auctioneer. Most

112
Catalogue des verres ardens, des verres objectifs, des microscopes & des aimants laissez par feu M. Hartsoeker [11 pp.], sold (and
bound) after the Bibliotheca Hartsoekeriana (The Hague: J. Swart, 1727).
113
Most likely these instruments came from Hartsoeker’s son François, a retired lawyer and painter, living nearby in The Hague. His
books were sold there on 23 July 1753 (website Bibliopolis). The second son, Theodore Hartsoeker, had already passed away in
1740. His assets, among which a collection of paintings, were already auctioned in 1742. Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van
schilderyen (’s Gravenhage, 1752), pp. 54–63.
114
These relatives were all descendants of Leeuwenhoek’s sister Margrieta (‘Grietgen’) and her husband Jan Jacobsz (du) Molijn. See
Appendix B.1.
115
Houtzager, ‘De microscopische nalatenschap van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’ (n. 2), pp. 48–9.
116
In 1731, in Rotterdam, Edens was involved in the Dutch lectures of J.Th. Desaguliers. Cf. Paul Hoftijzer, ‘An eighteenth-century
amateur of books and science in Warmond’, in: Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen [et al] (eds.), Living in posterity. Essays in honour of Bart
Westerweel (2004), pp. 147–56.
117
Unfortunately the Delft notary archive does not provide any clues regarding the role of these two notaries at the 1747 auction.
118
‘3 microscopia & 8 glaazen door Leuwenhoek’. Cf. Verzameling van een party konst-gereedschappen, wiskundige, werktuigkundige,
natuurkundige, gezichtkundige werktuigen, en andere rariteiten: nagelaten door [ … ] Abraham Edens (Leyden: Hendrik Koster,
1765), p. 13. Copy of the catalogue at Museum Boerhaave.
20 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

likely this was Willem Ouwens (1717–1777), a medical doctor, born in Delft but working in The
Hague. A year later, in 1748, he would be appointed professor of medicine at Franeker University.
His own library was sold in The Hague in 1779. But neither his catalogue, nor that of his father Rut-
gerus Ouwens (1692–1780), a former Delft schoolmaster who had become rector of the Latin School
in The Hague, contained any Leeuwenhoek microscopes.119

10. The mystery of the large number of vanished Leeuwenhoek microscopes

Here starts a new mystery. Today only a small number of Leeuwenhoek microscopes have survived:
only about ten genuine instruments can be identified (Appendix D). None of these microscopes is
still together with their original accompanying preparations or cases. Even in the auction catalogues
of the 18th and early 19th centuries these tiny instruments with their famous origin are rarely men-
tioned. Between the moment of the auction of 1747 and the year 1875, when a public appeal was
made to assemble as many Leeuwenhoek microscopes as possible120, we have found a Leeuwenhoek
microscope mentioned in an auction catalogue only about twenty times: all these records concern
Dutch scholars or wealthy scientific enthusiasts. Apart from that, between 1815 and 1875 six speci-
mens were present in – or admitted to – an institutional collection (see Appendix C). What then can
be the reason that all these initially highly valued objects disappeared in such large numbers? Already
in 1850 the Utrecht professor Pieter Harting, who then owned the annotated catalogue and therefore
knew that all instruments were bought by inlanders (‘natives’), wondered why the Leeuwenhoek
microscopes were so rare.121
Several circumstances may explain this loss. The most crucial one has much to do with Leeuwen-
hoek himself. He had learned how to use his microscopes, and that was not easy. Robert Hooke, for
instance, found the single lens microscope ‘exceeding difficult to handle’ and ‘offensive to my eye [
… ] which was the reason why I omitted to make use of them’.122 Leeuwenhoek however was blessed
with eyes that had a very high resolution. Van Seters conjectured that Leeuwenhoek was extremely
presbyopic, given the fact that he used spectacles with a more than usual magnification.123 Moreover,
Leeuwenhoek had experience in how to illuminate his preparations so that they could be seen in the
most advantageous way. Dobell even guessed that in the course of his experiments ‘Leeuwenhoek
had hit upon some simple method of dark-ground illumination’.124 In short, a Leeuwenhoek micro-
scope was so difficult to use, that without his personal guidance no other scholar could reproduce
what Leeuwenhoek himself had seen. In 1723, after his investigation of Leeuwenhoek’s gift of 26
microscopes to the Royal Society, Martin Folkes admitted that this was indeed the case. After dis-
cussing the high quality of the lenses and praising Leeuwenhoek’s ‘great judgement, experience, dili-
gence and indefatigable industry’, Folkes had to confess that he himself was not able to observe what
Leeuwenhoek had seen, ‘even with his own glasses’. However, because of the ‘great number’ of con-
firmations of Leeuwenhoek’s ‘most surprising discoveries’ by the ‘most curious and judicious obser-
vers’ there was no reason to distrust the findings of this ‘most worthy’ correspondent.125 It is exactly
as Ratcliff, in his study of 18th-century microscopy, has pointed out: ‘Folkes’ paper resembles an
apology, rather than a eulogy’.126 Ratcliff’s study confirms that Leeuwenhoek’s design was never
used by anyone else to make important discoveries. In the history of the microscope, Leeuwenhoek’s
119
Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic, 1599-1800, IDC nos. 1131 & 1497.
120
In 1875 in the context of a 200-year commemoration of Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries, a committee led by, among others, P.J.
Haaxman (a Rotterdam apothecary and one of the descendants of Leeuwenhoek’s heir Dirck Haaxman) made an appeal in
order to assemble as many microscopes as possible for an exhibition in Delft. Cf. De Navorscher 25 (1875), pp. 267–8. See
also Haaxman’s earlier appeal for Leeuwenhoek memorabilia in De Navorscher 19 (1869), pp. 180–3.
121
Harting, Het Mikroskoop, vol 3 (n. 88), p. 42 note.
122
Hooke, ‘Microscopium’ (n. 41), p. 96.
123
Van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microscopen’ (n. 2), p. 4589.
124
Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), pp. 331–2.
125
Folkes, ‘Some account of Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s curious microscopes (n. 2). Ratcliff, Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), p. 27–8.
126
Ratcliff, Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), p. 28.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 21

single lens microscope was a dead end.127 Ratcliff attributes this development to Leeuwenhoek’s own
secrecy, which prevented others from experimenting with his design and making improvements: ‘no
real tradition of his skills was transmitted and improved through subsequent generations of scho-
lars’.128 In our opinion the difficulty of the usage of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes could perhaps
explain this ‘secrecy’. For Leeuwenhoek it probably was not worth the effort to train his many casual
visitors in the same way that he must have trained his various ‘Teykenaars’ (‘draughtsmen’). More-
over, in the mid-eighteenth century there were more friendly usable alternatives.129 Or, to quote
Henry Baker, writing in 1743:
I suppose that our present microscopes are much more useful and convenient than these of his. Let him always
be remembered with the highest honour for [ … ] the microscopes he has left us, which are indeed extraordi-
nary, when considered as the first almost of their kind. [ … ] But the world since must have been strangely stu-
pid, if it could have improved nothing, where there was room for so much improvement.130

So, in 1747 most new owners must have been very disappointed about what they could actually see
with their acquisitions, with the obvious result that the (fragile!) little instruments were put aside
without receiving further attention.131 As collecting scientific instruments as an object of history
emerged in the Netherlands only in the 1830s, many microscopes must have been thrown
away.132 One of Leeuwenhoek’s first biographers, the Rotterdam apothecary Pieter Jacob Haaxman
(1810–1888), a descendant of Leeuwenhoek’s heir Dirck Haaxman, recalled in 1875 that in his youth
he had used a Leeuwenhoek microscope as a plaything, with the result that he had lost it.133 Another
loss, namely the disappearance in the early 19th century of Leeuwenhoek’s gift of a box with 26
microscopes with corresponding objects to the Royal Society, has been investigated earlier.134 But
even after the Leeuwenhoek commemoration of 1875 some Leeuwenhoek instruments were neg-
lected and even forgotten.
A notorious example is the fate of the small silver Leeuwenhoek microscope, investigated in 1859
by the Utrecht professor Pieter Harting, who established its magnifying capacity as 67 times.135 At
that time the instrument was owned by Robert Thomas Maitland (1823–1904), keeper of the zool-
ogical department of the Amsterdam zoo ‘Artis Natura Magistra’. In 1875, when Maitland was direc-
tor of the zoo in The Hague, the microscope was lent to the exhibition in Delft. But in 1880 Maitland
returned to the Amsterdam zoo. On that occasion he agreed to sell his collections to Artis, including
the Iconographia Zoologica, a famous collection of zoological illustrations Maitland had bought in
1866 at the auction of the Utrecht professor Theodoor Gerard van Lidth de Jeude (1788–1863).
But with the collection came also Maitland’s Leeuwenhoek microscope. However, unfortunately at
that time Artis did not record correctly the contents of Maitlands collection. The microscope
ended up in a drawer, where in due time it was seen as a collection of ‘rubbish’ … until 1978,

127
Ibidem, p. 56; Cf. Anderson, ‘Still Going Strong’ (n. 2).
128
Ratcliff, Quest for the Invisible (n. 2), p. 28.
129
See at length, Ibidem, chapter 1.
130
Baker, ‘An Account of Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopes’ (n. 2), pp. 514–5.
131
The screws of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes are made of rather soft metals – brass or silver. Improper use will result in damage to
the thread or the holder, making the instrument unusable.
132
Anthony J. Turner, ‘From Mathematical Practice to the History of Science. The Pattern of collecting Scientific Instruments’, in:
P. de Clercq & A.J. Turner (eds.), Origins and Evolution of Collecting Scientific Instruments (Oxford, 1995) [Special issue of the Journal
of the History of Collections 7 (1995), pp. 135–150]; idem, ‘The collecting, trade and display of early scientific instruments, 1830–
1930’, in: P.R. de Clercq (ed.), Scientific Instruments: Origins and Imitations. The Mensing Collection (Leiden, 1999), pp. 23–48; H.J.
Zuidervaart, ‘Cabinets for Experimental Philosophy in the Netherlands’, in: Jim Bennett & Sofia Talas, Cabinets of Experimental
Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Leiden/Boston: Brill 2013), pp. 1–26 (pp. 23–25).
133
Haaxman, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2), pp. 33–4: ‘een dergelijk instrumentje van Leeuwenhoek afkomstig [ … ] waarmede ik in mijn
jeugd dikwijls kleine insecten, vlerkjes en andere voorwerpen heb bezichtigd. Er werd, helaas, toen door mij niet meer waarde
aan gehecht dan aan gewoon speelgoed, zodat het in ongereede is geraakt en verloren ging’.
134
These microscopes were lent in the 1820s to Sir Everard (also known as Everald) Home (1756-1832), after which all traces were
lost. They were probably lost in a fire in Home’s residence in the Chelsea Hospital. See extensively Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n.
2), pp. 134–6.
135
P. Harting, Das Mikroskop. Theorie, Gebrauch, Geschichte, und gegenwartige Zustand desselben (Braunsweig 1859), p. 602. See
Appendix C, no. 21.
22 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

when one of the employees of the Artis Zoological Laboratory recognized the then black oxidized
Leeuwenhoek microscope in this drawer. He convinced his director to let it go to him for ten
guilders. But thirty years later, after the passing of any legal limitation period, this former employee
sold this very microscope at a London auction house for more than three hundred thousand
pounds!136 This case is a textbook example of individual greed as well as Thompson’s famous ‘Rub-
bish Theory’.137 Luckily the zoölogical illustrations of the Iconographia Zoologica are still preserved
in the Artis Library.

11. Conclusions
The starting point for this paper was the list of scientific instruments of the microscopist Antony van
Leeuwenhoek, enumerated in the inventory of the estate of his daughter Maria van Leeuwenhoek.
This list from 1745 inspired us, not only to discuss the usage of these instruments in Leeuwenhoek’s
professional life as a surveyor and wine gauger, but also to reconsider Leeuwenhoek’s practise in the
production of his single lens microscopes. Looking closely at the sources we conclude firstly that the
number of mathematical and surveying instruments in Leeuwenhoek’s possession suggests that he
may have done more surveying than we have written evidence of. Secondly we deduced that most
likely Leeuwenhoek passed through three stages in the production of his ‘magnifying glasses’.
Initially he followed a method of melting beads introduced by the Amsterdam Mayor Hudde,
then he invented his own method of grinding larger globules in a double-convex form, and finally
he managed to blow his beads in a non-spherical form, which gave him the highest magnifying
results. The fact that Leeuwenhoek was in the possession of several large burning mirrors, which
instruments entered the market in the late 1690s, suggests that he used these state-of-the-art devices
for his glass-blowing practices, to produce – what later appeared to be – his best lenses.
We further have investigated the fate of the large number of microscopes that appeared to be pre-
sent in the estate of Leeuwenhoek’s daughter. In 1747, at the public sale of these instruments, mostly
local Delft individuals were present at the auction. However, a more thorough analysis of the bidders
and their bids reveals that at least a third of the offered objects were bought by unknown persons via
a commission given to a go-between. This is confirmed by the fact that in the 18th century several
owners of a Leeuwenhoek microscope could be identified who were not present at the auction.
The circumstance that so many microscopes went missing in the first century after the auction
suggests that most new owners could not equal Leeuwenhoek in his viewing of microscopic speci-
mens. Their disappointment, added to the vulnerability of the tiny microscopes, and to the fact
that in the Netherlands collecting scientific instruments as objects of history only came into being
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, seems to have contributed to the loss of the bulk
of these instruments. This all substantiates the fact that in the history of the microscope Leeuwen-
hoek’s design – as successful as it was in the hands of its maker – still ultimately proved to be a dead
end.

Appendix A: List of Leeuwenhoek’s scientific instruments in the inventory of the

estate of his daughter Maria
The next list is part of a much larger inventory, listing the stock-holding, household effects and furni-
ture left by Maria van Leeuwenhoek at her death. The inventory starts with a copy of Leeuwenhoek’s
last will, in which it is stated that all his magnifying glasses, stored ‘in his cabinet’, should be sold
together with their cases. The ‘sealed trunk’ containing his ‘tools’ (which phrase refers to his other scien-
tific instruments) also has to be sold. The paragraphs 78 and 88, transcribed below, specified these
136
Christie’s London, sale 5808, lot no. 88: ‘A highly important Dutch silver microscope’. Sold for £ 313,250. See also H. Spiering, ‘Uit
een laatje met troep’, NRC, Wetenschapsbijlage, 11 April 2009 and the comments in the NRC, ‘wetenschapsbijlage’, 18 April 2009.
137
Michael Thompson, Rubbish Theory (Oxford, 1979).
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 23

instruments in more detail. Further, paragraph 88 of the inventory reveals that Leeuwenhoek’s micro-
scopes were stored in the Voorhuijs (front of the house), in ‘Een Oostindisch verlakt Cabinet, daarinne
| eenige kisjes met vergrootglaazen etc.’ (‘An East-indian laquered cabinet, within it some cases with
magnifying glasses, etc.’).

Original: Delft city archive, notary Joris Geesteranus, no. 2791, no. 30 (26 June 1745):

Art. 78 - Vergrootglazen

1. Een hout kisje met papier van buijten geplakt | met 15 doosjes, daarin 23 stelletjes met ver-|
grootglaazen als 11 kopere en 12 silvere
2. Een Oostindisch verlakt kisje met 21 soo koopere | als andere doosjes, daarin 42 zilvere stelletjes
| met vergrootglaazen
3. Een dito kisje met 8 doosjes, daarin 16 kopere stelletjes | met vergrootglaazen
4. Een d[it]o kisje met 24 doosjes, daarin 48 silvere | stelletjes met vergrootglaazen
5. Een d[it]o kisje met 20 doosjes, daarin 38 silvere | stelletjes met vergrootglaazen
6. Een kleijn vierkant verlakt doosje, daarin | 3 doosjes met 5 stelletjes met vergrootglasen, | als 2
goude en 3 silvere stelletjes en nog 3 silvere schroefjes.
7. Een Oostindisch verlakt kisje, daarin 16 | kopere stelletjes met vergrootglazen
8. Een d[it]o kisje met 12 doosjes, daarin 23 | copere stelletjes met vergrootglasen
9. Een groot vierkant geverfd kisje met 21 doosjes, | daarin 34 | copere stelletjes met
vergrootglaasen
10. Een doosje met eenige defecte instrumentjes | soo met als sonder vergrootglaasen
11. Een dito.
12. 2 doosjes daarin 4 kopere stelletjes met vergrootglaasen
13. Een goud stelletje met 1 vergrootglaasje
14. 23 stelletjes met vergrootglasen aan glaze buijzen
15. Een doosje met eenige losse vergrootglaasjes
16. Een d[it]o met eenige dito.

Art. 79 - Rariteijten

1. Een extra groote glaaze brandspiegel

2. Een kleynder brandspiegel
3. Een brandspiegeltje
4. Een vergrootglas
5. Een dito
6. 2 weerglazen
7. Een brandglas
8. Een barometer
9. 2 groote globen met 2 kleedjes daarover, ijder 14 duim diameter
10. 1 insteekende verrekijker
11. Een compas
12. Een kleijn compasje
13. Eenige instrumentjes om glazen te slijpen
14. Een landmeetersketting met stokjes en plankjes | daertoe behoorende, zijnde de ketting lang 5
roeden bestaande ijdere | roede uijt 20 deelen
15. 11 gesneede koopere plaaten
16. 1 kleijne dito
17. 2 swarte ebbenhoute peijlstokken met silvere | knoppen en bandjes
18. Een d[it]o peijlstok aan beijde sijden met silver | beslagen
24 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

19. Een d[itt]o aan een zijde met silver beslagen

20. Nogh eenige diverse ebbenhoute peijlstokken
21. Een doosje daarop staat Zilver en Goud
22. Een dito daarop staat Brandsteen138
23. Een draaijbank
24. Een tafel met een Blaasbalk
25. 2 copere meridianen, |
26. ii139 halve cirkels van 8 tot 1 duijm
27. 1 astrolabium van een halve cirkel met 1 compas binnen dezelve,
28. 1 saksonnenwijsertje en datumwijzer, |
29. 1 poolwijzer
30. 1 grote transportorium van 10 duijm diameters met een schaal
31. 1 d[it]o cleijnder à 4 duijm met 1 schaal |
32. 1 d[it]o kleijnder à 3½ duijm met 1 schaal
33. 1 copere winkelhaak |
34. 1 copere maat à 200 deelen |
35. 1 copere aap,140 |
36. 1 d[it]o wat kleijnder
37. 1 copere lineaal, fijn gesneeden met voetmaten |
38. 1 coper voetmaatje à 150 deelen
39. 1 coper tover instrumentje |
40. 1 kopere quadrant |
41. 1 gesneede koopere driehoek
42. 2 glaze prisma |
43. 1 groote dito.

Appendix B: Buyers at the 1747 auction of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes

B.1. Leeuwenhoek’s relatives
(in declining order of amount of money spent at the auction)

1. DIRCK [ JANSZ] HAAXMAN (1718–1782; noted in the catalogue as ‘Haagsman’). Great-grandson of

Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s sister Margrieta (‘Grietgen’). Baker of bread. Bought Leeuwenhoek’s
house in 1745 and refurbished it into a bakery. Obtained seven lots, containing five silver and
seven brass microscopes for 22.9 guilders, as well as two of the lacquered cabinets with drawers
for 8.8 guilders, in total 4.3% of the yield of the auction.141
2. STEEVEN BOLLAND. († 1776). Kuiper (‘barrel-maker’). Husband of MARIA HAAXMAN (1710–
1767), sister of no. 1. Bought four lots, containing five silver and four brass microscopes for
17.6 guilders. When in 1763 the couple separated only four silver and three brass microscopes
were still present.142
3. [PHILIPUS] DU MO[U]LIJN (1701–1775), only remaining son of the medical doctor and surgeon
Anthony de Molijn (1656–1729), who was the son of Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s sister Mar-
grieta. Bought three lots, containing five brass microscopes for five guilders and one of the lac-
quered cabinets with drawers for 3.60 guilders.

138
Read: ‘Barnsteen’; in English: ‘Amber’. Leeuwenhoek received these pieces of amber in 1687 from ‘a certain Doctor of Medicine,
born in Prussia’. Cf. Leeuwenhoek, Alle de Brieven (n. 11), no. 104 [letter dated 17 October 1687].
139
The document reads ‘ii’, so probably the number ‘2’ is meant.
140
English: ‘pantograph’.
141
De Loos-Haaxman, ‘Delftse burgers’ (n. 58), p. 140-note.
142
Ibidem, p. 137.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 25

B.2. Delft citizens

(in declining order of amount of money spent at the auction)

4. [WILLEM SALOMONS] VLAARDINGERWOUT (1679–1760). Delft notary, admitted in 1705; retired

1741. The Delft poet Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (1689–1733), who composed the text of Leeuwen-
hoek’s epitaph and made several other poems in his honour, dedicated the second volume of his
collected poems to Vlaardingerwout, calling him a vermaert rechtsgeleerde (‘renowned lawyer’).143
V. bought 22 lots, containing 17 silver, 26 brass, and 12 unassembled microscopes for 77.3
guilders. He bought also two of the lacquered cabinets with drawers for 16.5 guilders. In total
12.7% of the yield of the auction.
5. HENDRICK HALDER ( 1708–1767). Delft notary, admitted in 1734, living in the house De Bock on
the Wijnhaven. Brother of Andries Halder (no. 17). Bought 22 lots, containing eight silver, 24
brass, and 48 unassembled microscopes for 56.75 guilders. Among these was the only brass
microscope with three lenses side by side. Halder bought also two of the lacquered cabinets
with drawers for 20.75 guilders. In total 10.5% of the yield of the auction.
6. JAN [ PIETERSZ] VERBOOM († 1751). Stofjes wever (‘textile weaver’) on the Marktveld in 1721.
Bought 13 lots.
7. Dr. [CORNELIS] VAN GIJSEN (c. 1687–1758). Delft medical doctor since 1710. Bought 11 lots.
8. HENDRICK VERBRUGGE ( 1705–1785). Delft coppersmith. Bought nine lots.
9. CORNELIS DE VEGTER († 1748). Surgeon on the Koornmarkt in Delft (admission 1721). In 1740
he acquired three catheters from the estate of the Delft medical doctor Anthony Hendrik
Stork.144 Bought six lots, including the only silver microscopes with three lenses side by side.
10. ADRIAAN REES. Auctioneer (1745–1749) living on the East side of the Hippolytusbuurt (1749). In
1750 he became collecteur van de impost (‘collector of taxes’). Bought four items (probably com-
missions), including the only sold microscope mounted in gold.

The following Delft persons bought three lots:

11. MATTHIJS VAN DEN BRIEL (1725–1776). Klerk (‘clerk’). Lived on the Delft Koornmarkt. Bought
three items.
12. ADRIAAN SCHEER († 1764). Lived in Vrijeban, just outside Delft (1745). Bought three items.

The following persons bought two lots:

13. JOHANNES BERGHUIS (1725–1802). Carillon and organ player in Delft. Scientific enthusiast.
Bought one of the two available large Vischkijkers. In 1773 he traded in optical instruments.145
14. JACOBUS BERGHUIS . Not identified. Probably a relative of the preceding person.
15. ‘DE HEER FRANC VAN DER BURCH’ . This is either Frank Jansz van der Burch (1718–1775), Delft
lawyer in 1747, who became a director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1765, or
Franc Reijersz. van der Burch (1725–1764), Lord of Spierinxhoek, veertighraad of Delft (mem-
ber of the Delft city council) after1750.
16. JACOB [VAN DER] DUSSEN [ EWOUTSZ] (1710–1772), Lord of Souteveen en Middelharnis. Veertigh-
raad; Governor of the Delft Gasthuijs. (‘hospital’)
143
H.K. Poot, Gedichten (Delft: Boitet, 1728). See also: C.M. Geerars, Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (Groningen / Castricum 1979), pp. 105–
10; 232–8.
144
H.A. Bosman-Jelgersma, Vijf eeuwen Delftse Apothekers (Amsterdam, 1979).
145
H.J.Zuidervaart, ‘Reflecting “Popular Culture”. The Introduction, Diffusion and Construction of the Reflecting Telescope in the
Netherlands’, Annals of Science (2004), pp. 407–52 (p. 450).
26 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

17. ANDRIES HALDER. Brother of the Delft notary Hendrick Halder. Head of the reformatory De
Gekroonde Kabel in Delft (1754). Also vaandrig (‘officer’) in the Delft civic guard (1766).
Lived on the Marktveld (1740). Moved later (1765) to Amsterdam.
18. ISAAK DE LESPAUL (also written as ‘De L’Espaul’; 1722–1771), Gasthuismeester (1746) and Veer-
tighraad (1752) of the city of Delft.
19. W[ILLEM] VAN DER LELY (1698–1772). Delft notary admitted in 1724. Was in 1723 one of the
executors of Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s will. The viewing day for the auction was in his
house. His library and cabinet of rarities were sold in Amsterdam on 15 March 1773.
20. PIETER ( or PETRUS) VAN MARUM. Teacher of mathematics and navigation in Delft since 1740.
Lived on the west side of the Hippolytusbuurt. Bought in 1754 the faience factory De Romeyn
on the Achterom, where he produced Delft earthenware. Moved in 1764 to Groningen. Father of
Martinus van Marum (1750-1837), first director of Teylers Museum in Haarlem.
21. CASPER STAAKENBEECK († 1765). Portier (‘keeper’) of the Rotterdam Gate (1741). Lived in 1754
in the Vlamingstraat in Delft.

The following Delft persons bought one lot:

22. NICOLAAS BART . Keeper of the coffee house De Pelikaan in Delft since 1746 (sold in 1761, when
he left for the West-Indies). Mentioned in 1771 as vendumeester (‘auctioneer’) on Curaçao.
Buyer of one of the small lacquered cabinets for three guilders.
23. ‘ADVOCAAT BOOGERT’ . Probably François Boogert († 1766). Raad en schepen (‘council and
magistrate’) of Delft.
24. WILLEM BOX (1707–1763). Medical doctor in Delft since 1744. Lived on the Hippolytusbuurt,
close to Leeuwenhoek’s house.
25. JAN [ NORDINGH] DOIJ[T]SMA, Baker of bread in Delft. Brother of Bernardus Nordingh Doitsma
(† 1803), ‘preceptor’ (teacher) of the Delft Latin School from 1738–1771, who until 1781 lived
on the Hippolytusbuurt. Their father Johannes Doitsma (1675–1734) was rector of the Latin
School in Hoorn.
26. PIETER DE GROOT († 1773). Quartiermeester (1752) and Collecteur van de Gruitgelden (1766),
living on the Achterom (1750).
27. ‘DE HEER LOOCKEMANS’ . Probably Dirk (Fransz) Lokermans (1693–1767). Tingieter (‘tin foun-
der’), from Rotterdam, who later in life made a bequest to the Delft protestant church. His elder
brother Willem (Fransz) Lokermans (1697–1731) had lived near Leeuwenhoek on the
Hippolytusbuurt.
28. HENDRICK DE MEESTER († 1753). Confiturier (‘jam maker’). Maria’s northern neighbour on the
Hippolytusbuurt (1747).
29. JORIS MENSCHERT . Delft citizen, named as the owner of several houses since 1718. Probably a
variant spelling for GEORGE MESCH († 1757), apothecary, who in 1740 bought materials from
the estate of the Delft medical doctor A.H. Stork.
30. Ds. [PETRUS] ONDERDEWYNGAART (1706–1782). Delft Calvinist Minister since 1735. Grandfather
of Jan Hendrik Onderdewyngaard Canzius (1771–1838), who in 1800 founded a scientific instru-
ment maker’s factory in Delft and was later director of the Musée de l’Industrie in Brussels.
31. MAARTEN [VAN] OUTHEUSDEN († 1761). Living in Delft on the Achterom. Brother-in-law of Pet-
rus van Marum (no. 20).
32. JOHANNES PASPOORT († 1788). Chemist who in 1740 bought materials from the estate of the Delft
medical doctor A.H. Stork. Witness at the baptism of Martinus van Marum (1750) (son of no.
20). Lived on the Hippolytusbuurt (1788).
33. HERONIMUS PROENE (= Hieronijmus Andreas van Proenen), military officer (?) from Maastricht,
who married in Delft in 1741.
34. ‘DE HEER VAN SLINGELAND’ . Probably Barthoud van Slingeland, raad en schepen of Delft, whose
library was auctioned in 1753.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 27

35. NICOLAAS SNIP [also called ‘Snep’] († 1767). Sworn zout- en zeepkramer (‘salt and soap pedlar’) of
Delft (1749). Lived on the Koornmarkt (1747). Married to Anna Geisweit († 1748).
36. JAN FREDRICQ STEMBOR († 1781). Makelaar in obligatien (‘stock broker’) (1741). Also lieutenant
in the Delft civic guard. Married in Delft (1744).
37. JOHANNES VAN TONNINGEN († 1766), coster (‘sexton’) of the Delft ‘Nieuwe Kerk’ (1757), living in
Delft since his marriage in 1715.
38. DIRCK TRONSET ( corruption of ‘TRONCHET’). († 1764). Surgeon (?) on the Voorstraat in Delft.
Father of the Delft surgeon Daniël Tronchet (1721–1811).

B.3. Persons outside Delft (or not identified)

(in declining order of the amount of money spent at the auction)

39. ‘DE HEER OUWENS ’. (1) Most probably Willem Ouwens (1717–1779), medical doctor in The Hague,
born in Delft. Was appointed professor of medicine at Franeker University in 1748. His library was
sold in The Hague in December 1779. (2) Another possibility is his father Rutgerus Ouwens (1692–
1780), former schoolmaster at the Delft Latin School. Was in 1747 rector of the Latin school in The
Hague. Bought 10 lots, for 53.55 guilders. In total 7.9% of the yield of the auction.
40. M[ICHIEL] VAN LEEUWEN († 1769). Haarlem bookseller and auctioneer. Bought 11 lots for 41.60
guilders. In total 6.2% of the yield of the auction.
41. ‘DE HEER Fas’. Not identified. Perhaps Arent Fas, a koperslager (‘coppersmith’) from Leiden,
father of Jan Arent Fas († 1817), who in 1763 became lecturer of mathematics at Leiden Uni-
versity. Bought nine lots.
42. ABRAHAM EDENS ( c. 1690–1765). Retired merchant from Rotterdam with English roots. Brought
in 1723 a box with 26 Leeuwenhoek microscopes to the Royal Society. Moved in 1746 to War-
mond, where he had a large cabinet of experimental philosophy. Bought eight lots.
43. ‘Ds. SMIT’ . Perhaps Franciscus Smit, Lutheran reverend in Rotterdam. His library was sold in
1782. Bought seven lots.
44. ‘DE HEER DE WILDE’ . Perhaps Frederik de Wilde (1694–1757) from The Hague. His library with
scientific instruments and naturalia was auctioned in 1755. Bought seven lots.
45. ‘Ds. WESSELING ’. Perhaps P. Wesseling, Lutheran minister in Amsterdam. His library including
scientific instruments and rarities was auctioned in 1779. Bought four lots.
46. ‘DE HEER VAN REEDE’. Probably Frederik Willem van Reede (1717–Dec. 1747), 4th count of Ath-
lone, living in the Hague. Bought two lots.
47. WED. TOORNBURG. Not identified. The Delft Toornburg family had many members, but mostly
not well-to-do. Toornburg is also the name of some brokers in Amsterdam. This widow bought
one lot, containing the only two (silver) microscopes with two lenses side by side. In 1800 one of
these was present in the auction Vosmaer (Appendix C, no. 8).

APPENDIX C: Leeuwenhoek microscopes mentioned in Dutch collections, until the

1875 celebrations in Delft
In 1875 seven Leeuwenhoek microscopes (three made of silver and four of brass) were exhibited at
the Leeuwenhoek exposition in Delft, together with a small microscope lens, a leather case containing
five mounted lenses and an instrument to study circulation of the blood.146 Then, three brass micro-
scopes were still in the Haaxman family, two of which were eventually bought by the forerunner of
146
Lijst der tentoongestelde voorwerpen, die afkomstig zijn van of betrekking hebben op Antony van Leeuwenhoek, op den 8sten Sep-
tember 1875, bij gelegenheid van het 200-jarig jubilé van zijne ontdekking der microscopische wezens, te houden in de Kantonger-
echtskamer … te Delft (Delft 1875), nos. 55-62. Also in: Harting, Gedenkboek (n. 1), pp. 117–31.
28 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

Museum Boerhaave in Leiden. Today, one microscope is still preserved by a descendant of the Haax-
man family.147 The 1875 celebration of Leeuwenhoek’s achievements sparked the production of
copies of the Leeuwenhoek microscopes. So, only those mentioned before 1875 can be marked as
genuine without doubt. Below we present a list of those mentioned in auction catalogues and
some other sources. Most auction catalogues mentioned can be found with the help of the website
www.bibliopolis.nl, which presents an index to the microfiches of the Book Sales Catalogues of the
Dutch Republic, 1599-1800. At the end of these book catalogues often a collection of ‘rarities’ is
offered, sold together with the library of the former owner. In this section also small collections
of scientific instruments can be found. This survey of preserved auction catalogues was performed
in the course of a wider investigation of Dutch collections of scientific instruments.148 The results
with regard to Leeuwenhoek microscopes are as follows:149

C.1. Mentioned in private collections

(1) 1754: JAN ARNOLD VAN ORSOY († 1753), merchant in Amsterdam (‘4 zilveren en 1 kopere micro-
scoop door den Heer Leeuwenhoek geïnventeerd en gemaakt met glaasjes’ – four sold to
Jongerheld and one to Tilenburg).
(2) 1765: ABRAHAM EDENS (c. 1690–1765), retired merchant in Warmond, who attended the auction
of 1747 (‘3 microscopia & 8 glaazen, door Leuwenhoek’).
(3) 1785: ARON DE JOSEPH DE PINTO (1710–1758), merchant in Amsterdam (‘Een zak microscoop
volgens Leeuwenhoek’, bought by C. v.d. Velden, 3 gld.).
(4) 1785: MARTINUS WILHELMUS SCHWENCKE (1706–1785), professor of botany and a physician in
The Hague (‘1 microscoop van Leeuwenhoek’).
(5) 1790: JACOB F. VAN BEYMONT († 1789), former mayor of The Hague (‘Twee zilvere microscoopjes
door A. Leeuwenhoek in een koper doosje’).
(6) 1793: JOHANNES OOSTERDIJK SCHACHT (1704–1792), professor of philosophy and medicine at
the universities of Franeker and Utrecht (‘2 Leeuwenhoek microscopen’).
(7) 1796: PIERRE LYONET (1706–1789), code breaker of the States General and a renowned micro-
scopist in The Hague (‘Een echt microscoop van Leeuwenhoek, geheel van zilver’).
(8) 1800: ARNOUT VOSMAER (1720–1799), director of the cabinets of natural history and experimen-
tal philosophy of the Dutch Stadtholder, The Hague. (‘Vyf enkelde Microscoopen, en een
dubbeld, waar van de glaasjes in zilvere plaatjes ingevat zyn, zynde deeze door den beroem-
den Leeuwenhoek zelfs gemaakt, en een gedeelten dier geenen, met welke hy zyne verwon-
derende ontdekkingen gemaakt heeft’). Sold for 1.50 guilders.
(9) 1800: ANONYMUS , auction Thierry & Mensing, The Hague (‘Een handmicroscoop van
Leeuwenhoek’);
(10) 1806: EIL(H)ARDUS WILHELMUS UCHTMAN(N) († 1805), lawyer in Groningen (‘Een zilveren
Mikroskoop van Leeuwenhoek, in een koperen kokertje’).
(11) 1806: FREDERIK GEORGE ALSCHE (1768–1805). ‘Hoofdschout’ of The Hague, co-founder of the
Society Diligentia in The Hague. (‘Een zilver microscoopje van Leeuwenhoek’).
(12) 1809: JOHANNES JACOBUS SERRURIER (c. 1724–1804) [?]. Protestant minister in The Hague (‘Een
fraay microscoop van Leeuwenhoek, dienende voor dubbeld en enkeld zak microscoop en
voor door- en ondoorschijnende voorwerpen, met twaalf differente vermogens, leggende
in een zwart chagrijn kistje’).

147
Lijst (n. 143), no. 61; Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), 146–8, 159; Marian Fournier, Early Microscopes. A Descriptive Catalogue
(Leiden 2003), pp. 20–1.
148
Cf. Zuidervaart, ‘Cabinets for Experimental Philosophy in the Netherlands’ (n. 132).
149
We thank Tiemen Cocquyt of Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, for some additions to this list.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 29

(13) 1817 ALEXANDER HENDRIK METELERKAMP (1744–1816), former mayor of Gouda or Daniel
ALBERT REGULETH (1749–1794), Calvinist minister in The Hague, no. 149 (‘Microscoop
van Leeuwenhoek, in twee doosjes en een ander’).
(14) 1818 ANONYMUS ( J.A.J. Carré auctioneer, The Hague), no. 87 (‘Een zeer fraaie zakmicroscoop
met 5 [sic!] vergrootingen, in een kistje, door Leeuwenhoek’).
(15) 1820 ANONYMUS (A.H. Bakhuyzen auctioneer, The Hague), no. 50 (‘Een zakmicroscoopje van
Leeuwenhoek, in een doosje’).
(16) 1823: PIETER VAN BUREN (1741–1822), former secretary of the States of Holland in The Hague
(‘Een handmicroscoopje, met een glas van den beroemde Leeuwenhoek’ – bought by the
dealer J. Regenbogen, 2 gld.).
(17)1823 A microscope (no. 126, from the auction of 1747?) was illustrated on the title page of ISAAC
VAN HAASTERT , Anth. van Leeuwenhoek, vereerend herdacht in eene korte levensschets en
lofdicht (Delft: P. de Groot, 1823).
(18) 1832: PIETER DE RIEMER (1769–1831), professor of medicine in The Hague (no. 103: ‘Een zilver
handmicroscoopje van Leeuwenhoek’ – bought by Van der Hoek for 2.50 guilders).
(19) 1838: JAN JACOB Cau (1750–1836), ‘Heer van Stellendam, Hoofdingeland van Rijnland’ in The
Hague. (‘Twee Hand-Microscopen, volgens Leeuwenhoek, in een doosje’).
(20) 1847: CORNELIUS ANTHONIUS GEISWEIT VAN DER NETTEN (1771–1847), retired major-general,
living in Delft. (‘Een zilveren Mikroskoopje van Leeuwenhoek’). Perhaps identical to one
of the silver microscopes bought in 1747 by Nicolaas Snip, who was married to Anna
Geisweit (Appendix B, no 35).
(21) 1859: ROBERT THOMAS MAITLAND (1823–1904), zoologist in Amsterdam and The Hague. Silver
microscope, with a Dutch silver hallmark that proves that this microscope was sold at auc-
tion between 1814 and 1831. Bought by Maitland at an auction in Leiden around 1850.150
Investigated by Harting in 1859. Exhibited in 1875 (Lijst no. 62). Sold in 1881 together
with Maitland’s Iconographia Zoologica to the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. Acquired
under questionable circumstances by an employee of Artis in the late 1970s. Sold in auc-
tion 2009. Present location unknown.
(22) 1871: HENRICUS CAREL HALLEGRAEF († 1873), medical doctor from Harderwijk. Brass Leeu-
wenhoek microscope, a Leeuwenhoek loupe, and an aquatic microscope with a set of
five separate lenses, described in 1875 by Haaxman. According to a family tradition
these instruments were a gift from DAVID DE GORTER († Zutphen, 1783), former pro-
fessor of medicine in Harderwijk to one of Hallegraef’s ancestors, probably his great-
grandfather MICHIEL JOLIJN , apothecary in Zutphen.151 The aquatic microscope and
the set of lenses were exhibited in 1875 (as probably made by the Musschenbroek work-
shop) (Lijst nos. 57 & 58).

C.2 Present in an institutional collection before 187

(23) 1815: SOCIETY DILIGENTIA, THE HAGUE . (‘Een klein zilveren Hand-microscoopje van Leeuwen-
hoek, in een doosje’). Probably bought at the auction of the society’s co-founder F.G.
Alsche (Appendix C, no. 11). Sold in 1839 with 200 other instruments to A. van
Emden, Amsterdam.152

150
Mentioned in a letter from Maitland, dated June 1875 in the archives of the Nederlandsche Dierkundige Vereeniging (no. 82a),
cited by Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2), p. 169.
151
Haaxman, Leeuwenhoek: Ontdekker der Infusorien (n. 2), p. 35. M. Mendel-Roessel, ‘De vijzel van stadsapotheker Arnold Francken,
1683–1983’, Oud-Zutphen, Tijdschrift Van De Historische Vereniging Zutphen 2:4 (1983) 73–7.
152
Naamlijst & beschrijving der natuurkundige werktuigen behorende aan de maatschappij Diligentia in Den Haag, opgemaakt in het
jaar 1815, ‘N. Licht en Gezichtskunde’, no 24. Manuscript, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden. Cf. Peter Wisse, ‘The Philosophical Society
Diligentia [The Hague] and its instrument collection’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 64 (2000), pp. 3–8.
30 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

(24) 1846: MUSÉE DE L’ INDUSTRIE, BRUSSELS . (‘Quatre microscopes de Leeuwenhoek, dont deux
monté en argent, et les deux autres monter en laiton. Dans deux boites recouvertes en
cuir de Russie’).153 The first director of this museum was Jan Hendrik Onderdewyngaard
Canzius (1771–1838). The two silver microscopes may be those bought in 1747 by his
grandfather Petrus Onderdewyngaart (see Appendix A, no. 30).
(25) 1850: UTRECHT UNIVERSITY (mentioned by Harting in the third volume of his Het Microscoop
(1850), p. 43). Exhibited in 1875 (Lijst no. 60).
(26) 1872: LEIDEN UNIVERSITY received from H.C. HALLEGRAEF the instruments mentioned above
(no. 22). However, today the brass Leeuwenhoek microscope and loupe are missing.
Already in 1875 the attribution to Leeuwenhoek of the aquatic microscope and the set
of lenses was considered doubtful.154
(27) 1872: The MUNICIPAL MUSEUM IN Gouda received a silver microscope (with a silver hallmark
obtained between 1814 and 1831) from the apothecary ANDRINUS ANTONIE GIJSBERTUS
VAN ITERSON (1803–1897), director and founder of a stearine candle factory in Gouda. He
had acquired this instrument in the auction GEISWEIT VAN DER NETTEN (see no. 20
above).155 Exhibited in 1875 (Lijst no. 56).156
(26) 1875: LEIDEN UNIVERSITY . The 1875 exhibition showed a silver microscope, on loan from the
Leiden anatomical cabinet by JOHANNES ADRIANUS BOOGAARD (1823–1877), professor of
anatomy. (Lijst no. 55 – since missing).

Appendix D. Original Leeuwenhoek microscopes in current collections

For a more detailed discussion of most items in the list presented below, see: Van Zuylen, ‘On the
microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’ (n. 2), Engelsman, ‘Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes’ (n. 2)
and Ford, The Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2).

D.1. Acknowledged as genuine

(1) DESCENDANT OF THE HAAXMAN- FAMILY : One brass microscope (Cf. Appendix B, no. 1).
(2-5) MUSEUM BOERHAAVE , Leiden

two brass microscopes, bought in 1929 from the Haaxman family.157

.
. silver microscope, with known provenance since 1847, acquired in 1946 from the Gouda
Museum (Appendix C, no. 27).
. silver microscope, acquired in 1983. Provenance unknown, but a Dutch silvermark indicates
that this microscope was sold at auction between 1814 and 1831.158
(6) Utrecht University Museum, Utrecht
Brass microscope, with known provenance since 1850 (Appendix C, no. 25).159
(7) Current location unknown
Silver microscope, with known provenance since the early 1850s, sold in auction in 2009 (appen-
dix C, no. 21)

153
N.E. Mailly, Catalogue des collections du musée de l’industrie (Bruxelles, 1846), nr. 1475. The Musée de l’industrie was founded in
1826 and was dissolved after 1861.
154
Van Seters, ‘Leeuwenhoecks microscopen’ (n. 2), pp. 4579–80; Fournier, Early Microscopes (n. 147), pp. 23–4.
155
Mentioned in a letter, dated 17 July 1875 in the archives of the Nederlandsche Dierkundige Vereeniging, cited by Van Zuylen,
‘On the microscopes’(n. 2), p. 168.
156
Fournier, Early Microscopes (n. 147), p. 21; Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), pp. 137, 157.
157
Lijst, no. 61; Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), 146–8, 159; Fournier, Early Microscopes (n. 147), pp. 20–1.
158
Fournier, ‘Een microscoop’ (n. 12).
159
Van Cittert, Descriptive catalogue (n. 97), pp. 14–6; Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), pp. 149–51.
 ANNALS OF SCIENCE 31

(8-9) Deutsches Museum, München

Two silver microscopes and a brass microscope, acquired in October 1906 from MARINUS
PIETER FILBRI (1852-1917), amanuensis of the physics laboratory of Utrecht University
from 1889-1917. The Deutsches Museum requested a replica of the Utrecht Leeuwenhoek
microscope, but instead Filbri sent three originals that he had found via his ‘family, friends,
acquaintances and fellow craftsmen’.160 As Filbri was born in Delft, and was apprenticed
there at the P.J. Kipp scientific instruments factory, it indeed is plausible that through his
Delft network he found some of the many microscopes spread in 1747 among the Delft resi-
dents. The two identical silver microscopes (evidently a pair as auctioned in 1747) have charac-
teristics resembling the description of the missing microscopes of the Royal Society.161 In 1911
the Deutsches Museum exchanged one of these microscopes with the Zeiss Museum in Jena.
Unfortunately the Jena-instrument is missing, probably since World War II. Only some photo-
graphs have been preserved.162
(10) Planetarium Zuylenburgh, Oud Zuilen
Silver microscope, acquired in 2015. Provenance unknown, but engraved (in the 19th
century?) with the letters JW and stamped with genuine Dutch silver hallmarks which
indicates that this microscope was traded between 1807 and 1810, and again between
1814 and 1831.163 Therefore this instrument existed many decades before the English
antiquarian John Mayall manufactured copies, starting in the late 1880s.164 Moreover,
recent measurements by Tiemen Cocquyt of Museum Boerhaave, following the method
of the late Jan van Zuylen who measured all other known Leeuwenhoek microscopes,
have confirmed the affinity of this microscope lens with the well-known Utrecht micro-
scope, both in terms of refractive index, magnification and the presence in the glass of
miniscule air bubbles.165

C.2. Authenticity not established beyond doub

(11?) ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM , Antwerp, on loan to the MUSEUM VOOR DE GESCHIEDENIS VAN DE
WETENSCHAPPEN (Gent)
Between 1891 and 1909 the Antwerp microscope collector Henri-Ferdinand Van Heurck
(1838-1909) acquired a brass Leeuwenhoek microscope, claimed to be original.166 However,
having no known provenance, the authenticity of this microscope has been doubted.167 Never-
theless, Van Zuylen has remarked that the polish of the lens ‘“shows many pits and quite an
amount of fine scratches. In a newly made copy one would expect a better polished lens’”. So,
according to Van Zuylen, ‘the question of the authenticity of this microscope as yet has to
remain unsettled’.168
(12?) TOMÁS CAMACHO COLLECTION , Spain
In December 2014 a brass object was presented on eBay, together with some coins and other
objects, claimed to be an archaeological find, located with a metal detector in mud dredged out
160
Franz Fuchs, ‘Der Aufbau der Physik im Deutschen Museum 1905-1933’, Deutsches Museum, Abhandlungen und Berichte 25:3
(1957), pp. 22–4. Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’(n. 2), p. 170.
161
Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), p. 139.
162
Personal communication by Hans Meinl of the Optisches Museum Jena der Ernst-Abbe-Stiftung, January 2015. Cf. Van Zuylen,
‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2), p. 189.
163
‘Evaluation of a silver microscope’ (Unpublished report Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, December 2014).
164
From 1886 onwards, the English antiquarian John Mayall, secretary of the Royal Microscopical Society, made several copies mod-
elled after the Utrecht microscope which was exhibited that year in London. Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2), pp. 164–5.
165
Appendix to the earlier report (n. 163). Personal communication Tiemen Cocquyt, April 2015.
166
Edward Frison, ‘A Leeuwenhoek microscope. An account of the almost-forgotten instrument in the Henri van Heurck Collection
at the Natural History Museum, Antwerp, with a brief historical survey’, The Microscope 6 (1948), pp. 281–7.
167
For doubts on the authenticity of this instrument, see Ford, Leeuwenhoek Legacy (n. 2), pp. 152–3.
168
Van Zuylen, ‘On the microscopes’ (n. 2), pp. 171–2.
32 H. J. ZUIDERVAART AND D. ANDERSON

of a Delft canal in the 1950s and 1960s. These objects, which included an item that resembles a
Leeuwenhoek-microscope, were bought by a Spanish collector. The instrument has been exam-
ined by Brian Ford, who claims the object to be original.169 However, as of late 2015 no
attempts have been made to compare this find with undisputed genuine Leeuwenhoek micro-
scopes in a way that could yield a reliable proof of authenticity.170
N.B. Former COLLECTIONS NACHET , Paris; WHIPPLE , Cambridge, and CRISP , London
The Leeuwenhoek microscope in the former Collection Nachet (1929) has been identified as a
19th-century replica.171 The microscope in the former collection of Robert Stewart Whipple, as
well as the three Leeuwenhoek microscopes in Crisp Collection, auctioned in 1925, are also
replicas.172 The recently published guess by Lesley Robertson that Sir Frank Crisp obtained a
Leeuwenhoek microscope from the George III-collection of scientific instruments, formerly
in the possession of Queen Mary, has no ground in the sources she cites.173

169
Brian Ford, ‘Deepening mystery of disappearing microscope’ Laboratory News. 12 February 2015. Cf. http://www.labnews.co.uk/
features/deepening-mystery-of-disappearing-microscope/; idem, ‘The mystery of the microscope in mud’, Nature 521 (28 May
2015), Correspondence page.
170
Maarten Keulemans, ‘Delftse “Moddermicroscoop” mogelijk echte Leeuwenhoek’, De Volkskrant (29 may 2015), p. 7. Note added
in proof: see also: B. Ford, ‘Recording Three Leeuwenhoek Microscopes’, Infocus: Magazine of the Royal Microscopical Society (4
December 2015), pp. 30–43.
171
Albert Nachet, Instruments scientifiques et livres anciennes (Paris 1929), p 17, no. 1. See for comments: Dobell, Leeuwenhoek (n. 2),
p. 326.
172
A catalogue of the collection of antique microscopes, formed by the late Sir Frank Crisp (London: Stevens’s Auction Rooms 1925), lot
no. 1. See also: Reginald S. Clay & Thomas H. Court, The history of the microscope compiled from original instruments and docu-
ments, up to the introduction of the achromatic microscope (London 1932), pp. 35–6.
173
Robertson, ‘Van Leeuwenhoek microscopes-where are they now?’ (n. 2), p. 4. The Crisp catalogue (n. 172) explicitly states that
the sold items are replicas.

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