H. Bellieni Nancy. Microscopes Leitz

185 original microphotographs, silver prints by Ludwig Leitz pasted recto and verso onto 20 grey cardboard leaves, various sizes, c. 100 x 80 mm (90 photographs) ; c. 150 x 110 mm (70 photographs) ; c. 128 x 225 mm (4 photographs) ; and 210 x 208 mm (11 photographs). All prints are numbered in pencil on the image and most are captioned in white ink with indication of magnification ratio. Cont. red half calf over pebbled red paper covers. Folio (410 x 345 mm). Extremeties slightly worn, spine and covers rubbed.

Gerlach. Geschichte der Mikroskopie pp. 790/791. Exceptional and superbly preserved large album containing 185 silver prints by Ludwig Leitz (1867-1898). The Leitz company from Wetzlar was already one of the leading manufacturers of microphotographic apparatus in Germany in the 1870s. However, a real upswing in scientific microphotography only began with the work of Robert Koch, which is why Leitz produced a newly developed microphotographic apparatus with the number 50 in 1880. The designer was Ludwig Leitz (1867 - 1898), the son of the company founder, who also organised the sale of the apparatus. He visited the most important customers of the company himself, always accompanied by two leather-bound albums with microphotographs he had made himself, to show the excellent quality which could be achieved with his apparatus in various fields. (Cf. Gerlach p. 790). Our album offers on 40 pages a great variety of magnifications on extremely varied subjects: fungi, monkey embryos, human embryos, rat embryos, uteri, skulls and brains (human and chimpanzee), lungs, penis, placenta, finger, hand, solitary glass, microbes, bacteria and bacilli of diseases (plague, typhus, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, tetanus), animal sections, fish and turtles, mites, lice, plant sections, meteorites and minerals. Based on its design, the microphotographs, some of which are captioned in German, and the three quarto leaves (out of 4 ; leaf no. 1 is lacking) loosely enclosed with a typewritten German list of the subjects depicted and the magnification ratio, our album is probably also made by Ludwig Leitz himself. It might be a gift from the Leitz company to the camera manufacturer Bellieni or more personal to his proprietor and ardent photographer Henri Bellieni (1857-1938) founder of the camera manufacturer H. Bellieni et Fils in Nancy. The business flourished from the late nineteenth century until the early twentieth century. Several jumelle-type cameras, including stereo models, are known to have been produced. The photographs are in excellent condition.