Solar microscopes were introduced around 1740, and still popular in the nineteenth century. This incomplete example--only the mirror and window frame remain--may have been made in Paris around 1850 and used for public lectures at the Smithsonian.
Ref: Lerebours et Secretan, Catalogue et Prix des Instruments (Paris, 1853), pp. 11-12.
Deborah Warner, “Projection Apparatus for Science in Antebellum America,” Rittenhouse 6 (1992): 87-94.
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