Washington Teasdale (8 August 1830 – 19 September 1903) was an engineer and photographer. He invented the field naturalist's microscope and was one of the first people to use

lantern slides The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a sin ...

Early life

He was born in Brunswick Place,

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

to a wealthy family. Teasdale trained to be an engineer and worked in India on engineering projects. He became fluent in

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

, and according to his obituary, continued to think in it all his life. His particular scientific interest was in photography. He was one of the first people to prepare and use

in lectures.

Man of science

Teasdale, who delivered hundreds of lectures throughout his lifetime, was a founding member of the Leeds Photographic Society, the Royal Society of Microscopy and was a Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

. Part of his photography collection, including

cyanotype The cyanotype (from Ancient Greek κυάνεος - ''kuáneos'', “dark blue” + τύπος - ''túpos'', “mark, impression, type”) is a slow-reacting, economical photographic printing formulation sensitive to a limited near ultraviolet ...

photography, is held at the

Museum of the History of Science, Oxford The History of Science Museum in Broad Street, Oxford, England, holds a leading collection of scientific instruments from Middle Ages to the 19th century. The museum building is also known as the Old Ashmolean Building to distinguish it from th ...

. He photographed his scientific friends

Henry Perigal Henry Perigal, Jr. Royal Astronomical Society, FRAS Royal Institution, MRI (1 April 1801 – 6 June 1898) was a British stockbroker and amateur mathematician, known for his dissection problem, dissection-based proof of the Pythagorean theorem an ...

and

James Glaisher James Glaisher FRS (7 April 1809 – 7 February 1903) was an English meteorologist, aeronaut and astronomer. Biography Born in Rotherhithe, the son of a London watchmaker, Glaisher was a junior assistant at the Cambridge Observatory from ...

. As part of his work with the Society of Microscopy he invented the ''Field Naturalist's Microscope'' – a portable instrument of magnification. He died whilst attending a meeting of the

British Association for the Advancement of Science The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Teasdale, Washington Engineers from Yorkshire 19th-century English photographers 1830 births 1903 deaths People from Leeds Microscopists Photographers from Yorkshire