Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company

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Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company was a company founded in 1881 by Horace Darwin (1851-1928) and Albert George Dew-Smith (1848-1903) to manufacture scientific instruments.

Darwin was first apprenticed to an engineering firm in Kent, and returned to Cambridge in 1875. Dew-Smith was an engineer and instrument maker who was at Trinity College, Cambridge with Darwin.

Their partnership became a Limited Liability Company in 1895. In 1920 it took over the R.W. Paul Instrument Company of London, and became The Cambridge and Paul Instrument Company Ltd. The name was shortened to the Cambridge Instrument Company Ltd. in 1924 when it was converted to a Public limited company. The company was finally taken over by the George Kent Group in 1968, forming the largest independent British manufacturer of industrial instruments.

Several early employees went on to further renown, including Robert Stewart Whipple, who was appointed personal assistant to Horace Darwin in 1898, and later became Managing Director and Chairman of the company. He amassed a unique collection of antique scientific instruments that he later donated to found the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in 1944. William T. Pye, who had joined as foreman in 1880, left in 1898 to form the W.G. Pye Instrument Company with his son, which ultimately become the Pye group of companies.

[edit] External links

• Smithsonian Collection Catalogs
• Carl Zeiss SMT

[edit] References

• Cattermole, M.J.G. & Wolfe, A.F., Horace Darwin's Shop: A History of the Cambridge Scientific Company 1878-1968, (Adam Hilger, 1987) ISBN 0852745699