EXPORTING SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS AROUND 1700 - Gewina

88 Peter de Clercq
Turning now to the content of this document, we see that two thirds of the
entries in the catalogue are instruments for research and teaching. The last third
(nrs. 18-27) are medical appliances. The postscriptum states that these were his
best sellers: "trusses and harnesses for those with humps is my principal line of
trade," and continues "I make an infinite number of other items in daily use,"
which seems to refer to wares such as could be supplied by any brass-founder or
mechanic.
Knowing how prominently philosophical apparatus was to figure in the
workshop's repertoire following 's Gravesande's arrival in Leiden some decades
later, one is tempted here to try the following argument. Experimental science in
the late seventeenth century was still in its infancy, providing too thin a line of
business for an instrument maker to make a living. As we shall see, the Marburg
documents record Musschenbroek's success in creating and exploiting this
growth market. Several physical instruments sent to Marburg were not yet listed
in the catalogue (see Table 2 in section 6), while three "new experiments" added
to the air-pump (see section 6) and the percussion apparatus (see section 6)
further indicate that, indeed, Musschenbroek's repertoire in this field was
growing during the 1690's.
Yet, one should not push this argument so far as to imply that Musschenbroek
himself was intent on specializing on this new area of experimental
physics at the expense of the production of medical and practical everyday
goods. Forty years later, when the cooperation with professor 's Gravesande had
borne fruit and the workshop's trade catalogue held well over a hundred pieces
of apparatus for research and demonstration, the workshop continued to offer
aids for numerous physical ailments.^
6. Instruments sent to Marburg
Facts and figures
Dorstenius' letters have not been preserved, but from Musschenbroek's first
letter we can infer that around the summer of 1693 Dorstenius established
contact by asking a price quotation for an air-pump, the obvious foundation of
any cabinet of physics at that period. Musschenbroek's letters and invoices -
first in Dutch, later in the then common international language, French^ -
See the trade catalogue of 1736 (n. 25).
Musschenbroek's French is adequate but certainly not faultless, as he himself admitted in his
letter of 11 May 1695: "Mons"' me faut pardonner que je n'ecrit pas bon francois." I made no
attempts to correct his French in the quotations given in this article.