Barometers Realm

The name J. H. Steward appears on a great many surviving aneroids, and until now our entry for it said very little. That has been put right. The new article follows the firm across one hundred and twenty-three years and four generations: from a silversmith opening a shop at 406 Strand, through a chain of half a dozen London branches run by the founder's four sons, to a single premises quietly wound up on the Sussex coast in 1975.

Much of the story turns out to run through the rifle ranges. Steward began by selling watches and sporting equipment at the National Rifle Association's meetings at Wimbledon, awarded himself the title of "Official Optician" to the Association in 1866, and kept the connection alive for a century — the Steward Trophy, presented in 1902, is still shot for at Bisley. Alongside the barometers, the article covers the celebrated "Lord Bury" telescope, the firm's military and surveying instruments, and the nine British patents taken out by the family between 1895 and 1911, the last of them for an improved recording aneroid barometer.

Two sections will be of most practical use to collectors. The first is the address chronology: because Steward printed its current shop list on its dials, a Steward instrument can usually be dated to within a decade from the markings alone, and anything reading "Ltd" was made after February 1913. The second addresses the awkward question of who actually made these instruments. The evidence indicates that Steward manufactured some goods in its own workshops but bought in a great deal — aneroids and recording movements in particular — and sold them under its own name, which is why "retailed by J. H. Steward" is often the more honest attribution.