Baker, Henry

(b. London, England, 8 May 1698; d. London, 25 November 1774)

microscopy.

Henry Baker did valuable work on the teaching of the deaf and dumb, but he is especially noted for his popularization of the use of the microscope and for his contribution to the study of crystals. His father, William, was a Clerk in Chancery, and his mother, the former Mary Pengry, was “a midwife of great practice.” At the age of fifteen Baker was apprenticed to a bookseller whose business later passed into the hands of Robert Dodsley, the printer of Baker’s microscopical works. In 1720, at the close of his indentures, Baker went to stay with John Forster, a relative and an attorney, whose daughter had been born deaf. Baker felt inspired to teach the child to read and speak, and was so successful that he became in great demand as a teacher both of the deaf and dumb, and of those with speech defects. He amassed a considerable fortune, and possibly it was for financial reasons that he kept his teaching methods secret. Four manuscript volumes of exercise written by his pupils have, however, survived, and are in the library of the University of Manchester.

Baker’s work with the deaf attracted the interest of Daniel Defoe, one of whose early novels, The Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell(1720), was about a deaf conjurer. This book shows that Defoe was familiar with the methods for teaching the deaf used by John Wallis. Baker married Defoe’s youngest daughter, Sophia, in 1729. The year before, Defoe and Baker had established the Universal Spectator and Weekly, Journal, Baker using the pseudonym Henry Stonecastle. The magazine existed until 1746, and Baker was in charge of its production and a frequent contributor until 1733. His annotated volume containing copies of the journal, from the first copy until April 1735, is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Baker’s early literary efforts also included several volumes of verse, both original and translated. In 1727 he published The Universe: a Philosophical Poem intended to restrain the Pride of Man, which was much admired and reached a third edition, incorporating a short eulogy of the author, in 1805. This poem reveals Baker’s keen interest in natural philosophy, as well as his pious approach to the wonders of nature, and includes a reference to the microscope.

In January 1740, Baker became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and in March 1741 a fellow of the Royal Society. For the next seventeen years he was a frequent contributor to the Philosophical Transactions, on subjects as diverse as the phenomenon of a girl “able to speak without a tongue” and the electrification of a myrtle tree. Microscopical examinations of water creatures and fossils were, however, the subject of the majority of his papers and were included in his books on microscopy. In 1742 there was considerable interest among fellows of the Royal Society in the freshwater polyp(Hydra viridis)as a result of the recent discovery and description of this animal by Abraham Trembley, and with Martin Folkes Baker carried out experiments on this animalcule which he published in 1743 under the title An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Polype. The first edition of The Microscope Made Easy appeared in 1742; it ran to five editions in Baker’s lifetime and was translated into several foreign languages. The Copley Medal of the Royal Society was awarded to Baker in 1744 “For his curious Experiments relating to the Crystallization or Configuration of the minute particles of Saline Bodies dissolved in a menstruum.”

Baker was an indefatigable correspondent with scientists and members of philosophical societies all over Europe. He introduced the alpine strawberry into England with seeds sent to him from a correspondent in Turin, and the rhubarb plant (Rheum palmatum) sent from a correspondent in Russia. Eleven years after the appearance of The Microscope Made Easy, Baker published a second microscopical work, Employment for the Microscope, which was as successful as its predecessor. In 1754 the Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce was established, and Baker was the first honorary secretary. He died in his apartments in the Strand at the age of seventy–six, and left the bulk of his property to his grandson, William Baker, a clergyman. Neither of his two sons had a successful career, and both predeceased their father. He bequeathed the sum of L100 to the Royal Society for the establishment of an oration, which was called the Bakerian Lecture. Among notable Bakerian lecturers in the fifty years following Baker’s death were Tiberius Cavallo, Humphry Davy, and Michael Faraday. Baker’s considerable collection of antiquities and objects of natural history was sold at auction in the nine days beginning 13 March 1775.

Henry Baker was in many respects a typical natural philosopher of the eighteenth century. His interests ranged widely, and his skills were equally various; he was by no means dedicated to one branch of study, nor did he do research in the modern sense. Yet he deserved the title “a philosopher in little things”; and he had the rare gift of communicating his knowledge of, and above all his enthusiasm for, the microscope to others. This was what made his two books so widely popular. He regarded the microscope with reverence, as a means to the deeper appreciation of the wonders of God’s world. “Microscopes,” he wrote in the introduction to The Microscopes Made Easy, “furnish us as it were with a new sense, unfold the amazing operations of Nature,” and give mankind a deeper sense of “the infinite Power, Wisdom and Goodness of Nature’s Almighty Parent.” The Microscope Made Easy is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the various kinds of microscopes, how each may be best employed, the adjustment of the instrument, and the preparation of specimens. Part II has chapters devoted to the examination of various natural objects, in the manner of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia-e.g., the flea, the poison of the viper, hairs, and pollen. Part I of Employment for the Microscope is devoted to the study of crystals, and Part II is a miscellany of Baker’s microscopical discoveries. Both books were deliberately written for the layman.

Apart from his work as an instructor in the techniques of microscopy, Baker’s most important scientific achievements were the observation under the microscope of crystal morphology, for which he received the Copley Medal, and his account of an examination of twenty-six bead microscopes bequeathed to the Royal Society by Antony van Leeuwenhoek. His measurements of these unique microscopes (lost during the nineteenth century) are most valuable historical material.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Original Works. Baker’s writings are The Universe: a Philosophical Poem (London, 1727); Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, Henry Stonecastle [Henry Baker], ed. (London, 1728-1735), annotated volume Bodl. Hope F 103; The Microscope Made Easy (London, 1742); An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Polype in a Letter to Martin Folkes (London, 1743); and Employment for the Microscope (London, 1753), Some tewenty papers were published between 1740 and 1758 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The following are manuscript materials relating to Baker: letters from Baker—Bodl. MS Montague D11, ff. 70-75, 79; BM Add.MS4426, f.242; BM Add.MS4435, ff.255-259; indentures relating to Baker—BM MS Egerton 738, ff.2-5; four volumes of exercise written by Baker’s pupils, formerly in Arnold Library—Special Collection, Manchester University, 371 924Bl, Vols. I-IV; legal agreements concerning teaching—Special Collection, Manchester Unversity, 371 92092 f B4.

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Baker are A. Farrar, Arnold on the Education of the Deaf: A Manual for Teachers, Book 1, “Historical Sketch” (London, 1932), 33; William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 3 vols. (London, 1869), 1, 439, 441, 455-459; and John Nichols, Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer (London, 1782), pp. 413-416, 596, 645; and Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 9 vols. (London, 1812-1816), V, 272-278.

G. L’E. Turner