Description

For sale, an Eighteenth Century mahogany cased wall thermometer by George Adams of Fleet Street.

Comprised of a mahogany frame with glazed front with an 11” silvered thermometer scale

 This early example from perhaps the most pre-eminent maker of this period has an 11” silvered scale with Fahrenheit readings to the left, measuring from -10 to 140 degrees. The right-hand side is engraved with simple guidance for the observer marking various points including “Freezing, Temperate, Summer Heat, Blood Heat and Fever Heat”. The thermometer is fixed to the scale by two brass clasps and can be removed for separate use by means of a removable at the top of the frame. It is completed with the famous makers name engraved to the top, “Adams, Fleet Street, London.”

The scale is enclosed within a mahogany case with glazed front and graduated mahogany pagoda style top with back board of the case extending further behind to form an eyelet for wall hanging.

Thermometers of this age are extraordinarily rare, to find one by George Adams is an absolute pleasure.

The Adams dynasty needs little introduction, a family who began their success in the early Eighteenth Century. George Adams Senior was born in Fleet Street, London in 1709 to Morris and Mary Adams. His Father was a freeman of London, belonging to the Loriner’s Company and although he was a liveryman, was actually a cook by trade. At the age of fifteen (1724), George was apprenticed to a James Parker, a mathematical instrument maker of the Grocer’s Company for a premium of £20. His initial two years were not without difficulty as his father Morris died the following year leaving George, his mother Mary and two further children without support and the following year also saw the death of his master. By good fortune, George was turned over to a new master Thomas Heath who had by then been trading on The Strand for just six years but ran a successful and enterprising establishment and his adverts from the period attest to the wide range of instruments that the young Adams would have been tasked to manufacture. On completion of his seven-year tenure, he chose to continue his work for Heath, only being granted his freedom of the Grocer’s Company in 1733 by which point his mother had also passed away. It is likely then that the proceeds of his parent’s estate were the catalyst for George Adams to begin trading in his own right.

The establishment of his business at the sign of Tycho Brahe’s Head on Fleet Street was close to his home in Shoe Lane but he joined a community of already established scientific instrument makers in that area and could guarantee a certain amount of passing trade from the positioning. He also kept up his ties with Thomas Heath which is evidenced from dual advertisements that were taken out by the pair in the mid-1730’s. His prominence as an instrument maker really took off in the 1740’s where he began to undertake work for both The Board of Ordnance and The East India Company. It was also the decade in which the microscope began to ascend in its popularity and Adams, seeing an opportunity, undertook to write the first of his two famous publications. This initial publication, “Micrographia Illustrata” was introduced in 1746 at the same time as his New Universal Microscope and must have been timed to support his instrument’s release to the market but the book was in its majority a compilation of many previously known publications but served to provide his audience with instruction and a full account of the possible uses to which this instrument could be applied.

Tragedy struck Adams again in the same year with his wife Ann’s death, leaving him with two young daughters and records of his duties as churchwarden would suggest that he threw himself into both business and civic duties for the following two years until he finally remarried to Ann Dudley in 1748, a marriage that spawned a further three boys and six girls during his lifetime.

By 1750, Adams had also picked up the accolade of supplier to the Royal Mathematical School (then part of Christs Hospital) and had also been elected to the livery of The Grocer’s Company alongside his old master Thomas Heath and fellow instrument maker, John Gilbert. His short relationship with the mathematics teacher Richard Jack also provided Adams with his only patent for a quadrant and a new refracting telescope which was widely advertised as exceeding the magnification power of any of its competitors. Adam’s claim brought him into direct conflict with the young (and perhaps equally famous for his involvement in the Dollond achromatic lens affair) Francis Watkins of Charing Cross. Watkins publicly challenged Adams and Jack to a test of this instrument against his own in 1752, an affair that ultimately led to the pair being exonerated much to Watkin’s chagrin.

By 1757, the young George III had reached the age of eighteen and took the position of Prince of Wales and Adams benefitted from this change of events in the Royal Household by receiving his first Royal Appointment. His new title as, “Mathematical Instrument Maker to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales” would have immediately increased the level of trade had it not been for a further setback in the form of a fire which ravaged numerous premises on Fleet Street including his own. It wasn’t until the end of the year that the ever-labouring Adams had managed to open in alternative premises on Fleet Street and circumstances must have proved encouraging enough for him to have taken the position of Junior Warden in the Grocer’s Company in 1758.

With the accession of George III to the throne in 1760, George Adams by default became a provider of scientific instruments to His Majesty the King and the same decade saw Adams begin the production of globes, a product which has come to be a recognised and highly regarded part of the company’s output. By 1766, Adams also released his second famous publication, “A Treatise Describing and Explaining the Construction and Use of New Celestial and Terrestrial Globes”. In similar circumstances to his previous output on microscopes, it was timed to support his new creations and his dedication of the book to The King would have been added some further momentum to the exercise. Adams’s son, George Adam’s the younger had also by 1765 become apprenticed to his Father so the marketing exercise would have provided first hand evidence to Adams the Younger of the power of the printed medium. He would also have been in the same company as a young Scotsman, John Miller who later returned to Edinburgh and formed an early partnership with Alexander Adie.

In October of 1772, George Adams died at the age of sixty three, he had spent the last six years of his life largely dedicated to the updating and republication of his two most famous works. His son, George the younger had finished his apprenticeship but had not applied for his freedom and therefore had to move quickly in order to maintain the family business. His mother Ann had been left in control of the firm as a result of the content of her husband’s will and the urgency is clear from existing advertisement which seek to make it clear that Ann & George Adams, “continue to carry on the business of the late Mr Adams”.

The younger Adams continued until his untimely death in 1796 where after the business was wound up.

Circa 1770