From Benjamin Martin's General Magazine of 1755.
Benjamin Martin (1705 - 81).
Truly a Man of the Enlightenment.
Benjamin Martin, was an English science teacher, instrument maker, and popular science author, he died on Feb 9, 1782, at the age of 75-77.
Son of John Martin he
was raised on a farmat Broadstreet, Worplesden, Surrey and apparently had little access to formal
schooling, but he read voraciously, and by the time he was in his mid-twenties,
he had started a school in Sussex, and he was soon writing textbooks of a sort
for use in his and other similar kinds of schools.
In 1729 he married Mary Lover of Chichester, and at the time
of his marriage was described as a merchant of Guildford. The couple had two
children, a daughter, Maria, and a son, Joshua Lover Martin, who joined his
father in the 1770’s to form the firm of B. Martin and Son.
Martin was tradeing at South St., Chichester, Sussex (1736-40).
In 1742, he moved to Reading, on the Thames near London, and there he published two substantial quartos. Micrographia nova (1742), about two new microscopes he had invented, one a pocket reflecting microscope.
The other was A Course of
Lectures in Natural and Experimental Philosophy (1743).
He published Benjamin Martin's General Magazine of Arts and Sciences from1755 until 1764.
Benjamin Martin ended up with a large workshop in Fleet Street which produced instruments under his name; made improvements to the microscope and wrote extensively in the field of natural philosophy.
Hadley Quadrant & Visual Glasses, Two doors from Crane Court, Fleet St. (1756-9), resident in Fleet St. (1756-82),
He was Four doors East of Crane Court (1760),
The New Invented Visual Glasses, Fleet St. (1761) & 171 Fleet St. (1767-77), London.
A very close neighbour to Martin in Fleet Street was Benjamin Rackstrow on the Corner of Crane Court on the North side of Fleet St. see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2026/02/john-cheere-hoskins-hoskings-and-oliver.html
and very close to the building of the Royal Society in Crane Court.
The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Philosophy (second edition, London: 1772).
The essay is written in the form of conversations between Cleonicus, home from College for the summer, and his sister, Euphrosyne, whose lively interest in the natural sciences (“philosophy”) is impeded by her lack of access to instruction on the topic.
She has formed the plan of getting her brother to help her, and in a series of dialogues, Cleonicus introduces her to astronomy and physics, using sketches, models, and experiments. Although she frequently suggests that a new subject may be too difficult for her, her intelligence and his organized and factual instruction consistently produce firmly rooted understanding on which she builds.
This work is a rare publication in England in the 18th Century that speaks out for women’s
education, arguing that if they were given the opportunity to study the
sciences, they could excel.
He was very successful in his day but since his teaching drove his book sales, that source of income ran low.
By the early 1780s, he was bankrupt. In 1782, he was dead, possibly the result of a botched suicide.
He left no money, but he had an extensive collection of instruments, which generated a thousand pounds at the bankruptcy auction.
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