Benjamin Pike Jr.

Benjamin Pike Jr.
Benjamin Pike Jr.
Born	1809; New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	May 7, 1864 (aged 53); Astoria, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Optician
Spouse	Frances Matilda Hope (m. 1838)
Parent	Benjamin Pike Sr. (father);

Benjamin Pike Jr. (1809 – May 7, 1864) was a manufacturer of philosophical and optical instruments. He was the eldest son of Benjamin Pike Sr., whom he joined in business in 1831-1841, creating the firm Benjamin Pike & Son.^[1]^[2]

Early life

Benjamin Pike Jr. was born into an English immigrant family in New York City, New York, in 1809, the son of an optician who had created his own optical, scientific, and engineering business just three years earlier in New York, Benjamin Pike Sr.^[3] Very little is known about Pike's early life, but it is known he grew up in the Pike family home on North Moore Street, Manhattan, as did his siblings.^[3] It is presumed that he studied to be an optician like Pike Sr., and records show that around 1831 he joined his father in business, with the firm being renamed Benjamin Pike & Son.^[1] This name would change quite frequently as family members came and went from the business.^[3] Daniel Pike joined his brother and father as an optician in 1839, and the business was renamed Benjamin Pike & Sons.^[4]

Career

By 1840, the firm was viewed in high regard by patrons and experts alike, with Benjamin Pike & Sons going on to win a Silver Medal at the Fifth Annual Fair of the Mechanics' Institute, being commended for their "surveying and drawing instruments".^[3] The Thirteenth Annual Fair of the American Institute would mark another victory for the firm after receiving a second place Diploma for "specimens of surveyors compasses and levels, beautiful finish"^[5]

In 1843, Benjamin Jr. separated from his family's business and formed his own firm viewed in similarly high regard by the general public.^[6] known simply as Benjamin Pike Jr. & Co., located at 294 Broadway,^[7]^[8]^[9] which also served as his family's home until 1858.^[3]

It is here where both Pike Jr.'s optical knowledge and marketing genius propelled his business to new heights through the 1840s through both innovative strategy and market expansion. He is known to have issued two 2-volume catalogs, in 1848 and in 1856, that exploded his popularity and shared the expanse of his instruments' quality and reputation.^[10] Benjamin Jr. had evidently learned the field extremely well as he won countless awards for both the quality and use of his many instruments. His firm would go on to win three silver medals at American Institute Fairs shortly after going into business. Two of which were for his remarkably "superior air pumps"^[7]^[11] and one other for his innovative "electro-magnetic apparatus".^[11] It was again at the American Institute Fairs that he would win two diplomas that demonstrated his firm's proficiency in both purely mathematical and scientific instruments.^[12]

Rather than simply restricting himself to the market of New York City and those who physically came to his Manhattan firm, Pike created and twice published a massive catalog of over 750 items, fitted with illustrations, engravings, and lengthy descriptions of countless scientific instruments manufactured by his company from telescopes to spectacles.^[13]^[14] An innovation not only revolutionary for his business but for the entire scientific world and the diaspora of its knowledge.^[15] It was regarded as the most comprehensive collection of philosophical instruments to ever be conceived that acted as a near-universal catalog of countless devices and scientific products of the age.^[14]^[16]^[17] His depictions and descriptions were so robust and unprecedented, in fact, that his engravings were used commonly for more than a century for analysis of both period and contemporary counterparts of scientific instruments.^[18] His work went on to become the basis for scientific demonstration and description in both professional and scholastic environments.^[15] Moreover, it was with these catalogs that Pike took the opportunity to further emphasize the quality of his products^[19] in these catalogs and the innovative and modern nature of his designs that incorporated all the finest aspects of the age's contemporary science. He further wished to sway the favor of the United States' growing scientific community and shift their consumption from traditionally European instruments to those of his own firm, and in this goal, he largely succeeded.^[20]^[21] It was finally these catalogs that prompted orders to flow in from all across the United States and even parts of Europe,^[22] which brought Pike and his company to new heights of fame and prestige. He then massively expanded his business to accommodate the new influx of customers, which further grew the expanse and reach of his firm and word of its utmost quality.^[12]

With such a quantity of both patrons and corresponding fame, the Pike family desired an escape from the busy and crowded life of the city where they had been living on the upper floors of their shop for over a decade. So using the vast riches collected as a result of their massive surge in business, Pike constructed an $85,000 built a 27-room mansion in Northern Queens in what is today Astoria, New York.^[23] He was seen here in the 1860 U.S. Census, and despite his famous optical firm, Pike had his occupation listed as a farmer.^[3] The home was later sold to William Steinway of the piano-making Steinway family in 1870 after the death of Benjamin Pike Jr., and is today known as the Steinway Mansion.^[24]^[25]

Personal life

Pike married Frances Matilda Hope^[26] on April 14, 1838, with whom he had a son and two daughters.^[17]

Death

Pike died suddenly and without known cause on May 7th, 1864, in Astoria, New York, around the age of 53.^[12] His widow subsequently sold the mansion, which it would be bought by William Steinway in 1870. It is unknown where Pike's wife and children moved after this.

According to directories, the Pike Jr. firm was permanently closed shortly after.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b "Benjamin Pike, Jr. | People | The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments". waywiser.rc.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-11.
^ "Benjamin Pike Surveying Instrument Maker". compleatsurveyor. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "Benjamin Pike". www.microscopist.net. Retrieved 2024-07-11.
^ Institution, Smithsonian. "Protractor Retailed by Benjamin Pike & Son". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2024-07-11.
^ Mason, Cyrus (1840). The Oration on the Thirteenth Anniversary of the American Institute. Harvard University. p. 50.
^ Roberts, Hilton E. (December 1941). Occupational Hazards. Vol. 4. Internet Archive. Penton Media.
^ ^a ^b "The Fair of the American Institute". Scientific American. 4 (11). New York: 82.
^ Doggett, John (1878). Broadway in 1851. Columbia University Libraries.
^ Child, Ernest (1940). The Tools of the Chemist: Their Ancestry and American Evolution. Internet Archive. New York, Reinhold Pub. Corp. p. 5.
^ Koch, Joe (1994-06-01). Magic Lantern Society of the United States and Canada. Vol. 6. p. 5. ISSN 1059-1249.
^ ^a ^b Annual Report of the American Institute, on the Subject of Agriculture. UMass Amherst Libraries. New York: American Institute in the City of New York. 1843. p. 111.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^ ^a ^b ^c "Who Was Benjamin Pike?". www.queensbuzz.com. Retrieved 2024-07-11.
^ Maillet, Arnaud (2004). The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art. New York: Zone Books. ISBN 978-1-890951-47-4.
^ ^a ^b McBrayer, Alan; Valenza, Thomas (2012). History on Your Face- Common Spectacles Styles before, during and after the Civil War. pp. 9–12.
^ ^a ^b Quackenbos, George Payn (1871). A Natural Philosophy: Embracing the Most Recent Discoveries in the Various Branches of Physics. University of California. New York: D. Appleton and Company. p. 4.
^ Genuth, Sara Schechner (May 1987). "Book Review: Nineteenth-Century Apparatus: Pike's Illustrated Catalogue of Scientific & Medical Instruments". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 18 (2): 140–141. doi:10.1177/002182868701800215. ISSN 0021-8286.
^ ^a ^b "Benjamin Pike & Sons Opticians at Historic Camera". historiccamera.com. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
^ Drepperd, Carl William; Smith, Marjorie Matthews (1953). Handbook of Tomorrow's Antiques. New York, Crowell. pp. 123–124.
^ Carroll, G. Danielson (1859). Carroll's New York City Directory. Columbia University Libraries. New York, Carroll & Co. p. 168.
^ Dwight, Theodore, ed. (February 1, 1849). "Scientific Instruments". Dwight's American Magazine, and Family Newspaper. 5 (2). New York: Open Court Publishing Co: 61.
^ Smart, Charles E. (1962). The Makers of Surveying Instruments in America since 1700. Internet Archive. Troy, N.Y., Regal Art Press. p. 121.
^ Henry, Joseph; Reingold, Nathan; Rothenberg, Marc (1985). The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 5. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 305. ISBN 978-0-87474-123-0.
^ Jim Sabastian (2016-10-12). The Steinway Mansion Documentary. Retrieved 2024-07-12 – via YouTube.
^ Barrette, Bill; Yau, John (1991). Big City Primer: Reading New York at the End of the Twentieth Century. New York: Timken Publishers. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-943221-13-7.
^ Brockmann, Jorg (2002). Five Hundred Buildings of New York. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. p. 623. ISBN 978-1-60376-266-3.
^ "Married". The New Yorker. Vol. 5, no. 5. New York: H. Greeley & Co. 1838-04-21. p. 78.