100 Years of Prior Scientific

17th July to 8th September 2019

This year marks Prior Scientific’s 100th year anniversary since the company was founded in 1919. The exhibition tells the story of the company’s development and showcases some of its finest products. These include a microscope taken to the Antarctic by Robert Falcon Scott and an early microscope with a guarantee signed by Walter Robert Prior himself.

The company was originally founded by Walter Robert Prior and based in Eagle Street London, before the London Blitz destroyed the building and the company relocated to Northgate End, Bishop Stortford and Hertfordshire. In 1978, Douglas Fielding, who had been an investor in the McArthur microscope, purchased W.R. Prior and Co. and the name changed to that of Prior Scientific Instruments, Ltd. A few years later, Mr. Fielding purchased James Swift & Sons, a leading polarizing microscope manufacturer and merged it in with Prior. Today the company based in the village of Fulbourn, Cambridge has offices around the globe: Jena, Germany: Tokyo, Japan and Suzhou, China, to help increase its global reach and better serve its partners and customers.

Since Prior’s beginning, it has been a company characterized by its great development and its constant growth. Today it provides solutions to the most challenging precision positioning devices, optical systems, automation solutions, and components. In this exhibition, you can find various products that reflect the growth of the company from one of its earliest microscopes to a present day automated microscope stage.