The prioritisation in selling off duplicate works of art before historical scientific instruments
is therefore strongly indicative of some sense of the historical value of these artefacts of
former science. The trustees wanted to keep their museum of the history of science.
Yet the same time, what also transpires perfectly clearly from the analysis of Lorentz’ and his
assitants’ activities at Teylers given above, is that as long as they were in charge of the
scientific instrument collection they never made an active effort of highlighting it for its
historical value; Lorentz’ focal point was the laboratory, not the museum. On the contrary,
from the few references he made to the museum or the collection at all, two points clearly
transpire: firstly, that in his eyes the instrument collection served as a sort of reservoir of
instruments which could be used for laboratory work, should they prove to be of any
assistance; and secondly, that to him the museum and laboratory were separate entities.
This second point is most clearly illustrated by a card he sent to the curator of the art
department, Johannes Frederik Hulk, when he was expecting a visit from Einstein and his
wife. It read:
“Dear Mr. Hulk,
I hope to come to the museum tomorrow after coffee at about 2 o’clock with Mr. and Mrs.
Einstein and we would greatly appreciate it, if we could see some things.
Yours respectfully, H.A. Lorentz” 188
In other words, “after coffee”, Einstein and Lorentz - curator of the physics department I
wanted to go on what amounted to a guided tour of the adjacent Teylers Museum.
In his annual reports Lorentz repeatedly stated how he resorted to instruments from the
museum’s collection for use in the laboratory. The most prominent example was the
conversion of a Repsold universal instrument that had been acquired by van der Ven’s
predecessor van der Willigen in 1878, into a multipurpose spectrometer. This conversion
amounted to a total cost of f6316,-.189 In 1912 Lorentz remarked that “a lamp of Duborcq,
present in the museum, provided good service” during some of Elias’ spectrographic
experiments.190 In 1914 he reported that equipment required by Mrs. Bakker “could be
assembled with the help of some instruments from the collection”.191 And in 1923, when
money was getting tight, Lorentz reported that only a few of the instruments required by
Coster had had to be bought new because it had turned out that the laboratory was actually
already well equipped for the purposes of his research, adding that some instruments had also
188 “Zeer geachte heer Hulk, Ik hoop morgen na de koffie, tegen 2 uur met den Heer en Mevr. Einstein in het
Museum te komen en wij zullen het dan zeer op prijs stellen, zoo wij wat mögen zien. Met vriendelijken groet
hoogachtend Uw dienst. H.A. Lorentz” : H.A. Lorentz to J.F. Hulk”, 10.02.1911, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 124. I am
grateful to Marijn van Hoorn for having drawn my attention to this letter.
Hoorn, ‘T h e Physics Laboratory o f the Teyler Foundation (Haarlem) Under Professor H.A. Lorentz 1909-
1928,” 16.
90 “Eene in het museum aanwezige lamp van Duborcq bewees [...] goede diensten”: “Jaarverslag 1911-1912”,
06.04.1912, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.
“kon met behulp van eenige in de verzameling aanwezige instrumenten worden samengesteld”: “Jaarverslag
1913-1914”, 08.04.1914, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.
been converted by van Waveren. At the same time, instruments from the collection were
repeatedly lent to external researchers for their experiments.
This is not to say that Lorentz looted the museum or didn’t take care of the instruments that
were housed there. On the contrary, his annual reports also reveal that van Waveren and his
apprentice son spent time cleaning both the instruments and the showcases they were stored
in. In 1912 for instance Lorentz reported that “a number of old instruments, such as an
electromagnet, a set of scales and a hot-air machine, were completely cleaned, checked up and
revamished.”1 In 1917 he wrote that “much care was also devoted to the cleaning of
cupboards and instruments in the Museum and the restoration [herstellen] of some old
apparatus.” One year later, Lorentz reported again that “the first and second amanuensis
[van Waveren and his apprentice] spent a lot of time checking and restoring instruments from
the Museum”. It says a lot though that these thorough cleaning and repair jobs were
undertaken towards the end of World War I, when no new instruments were being bought and
research and other activities had been reduced to a minimum because of the fuel shortage.
Again, it becomes clear that Lorentz’ focal point at Teylers was the laboratory, and that he
possibly didn’t even recognise the museum’s potential as a showcase for the history of
science, alongside all the other collections that were being rediscovered throughout Europe
precisely during Lorentz’ tenure at Teylers.
At the same time however this also meant that, in principle, the original museum remained
untouched and unchanged for another two decades. By the time Lorentz passed away, the
Oval Room in particular clearly belonged to another era entirely, and the 1885 extension was
more than 40 years old already too. Just five years after Lorentz’ death Fokker published a
new guidebook to the instrument collection, with a strong emphasis on the rich history it
illustrated. Significantly, he placed a far stronger emphasis on the collection’s history than
van der Ven had in his guidebook. And in this sense it is also not surprising and maybe even
symbolic that when Fokker’s successor Jacob Kistemaker arrived in Haarlem in 1955 and the
trustees took the decision no longer to continue funding research at Teylers, he dismantled all
of Lorentz’ laboratory and sold all the instruments that it contained - but didn’t touch any part
of the museum.
One could therefore conclude that on the one hand Lorentz’ tenure as curator at Teylers
marked the end of an era: the era of the Teyler Foundation’s role as one of the most important,
perhaps even the most important, patron of experimental research in the Netherlands. But on
the other hand, because of events surrounding his tenureship and the fact that he took little
active interest in Teylers Museum, the Foundation and its museum were soon able to take on a
new role as beacons of the history of science.
192 “Jaarverslag 1923-1924”, 31.03.1924, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.
1 “Enkele oude instrumenten, als electromagnet, balans en heetelucht-machine, werden geheel gereinigd,
nagezien en opnieuw gevernist.”: “Jaarverslag 1911-1912”, 06.04.1912, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.
“veel zorg werd ook bested aan het schoonmaken van kasten en instrumenten in het Museum en het herstellen
van eenige oude apparaten.”: “Jaarverslag 1916-1917”, 07.04.1917, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.
195 “de eerste en tweede amanuensis [hebben] veel tijd besteed aan het nazien en herstellen van instrumenten uit
het Museum”: “Jaarverslag 1917-1918”, 07.04.1918, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 191.