W. Lens Aldous

Who is W. Lens Aldous?

W. Lens Aldous was an illustrator who reproduced the findings of the early workers in microscopy, and an early member of the Royal Microscopical Society.

Lens Aldous lived in the south of London. He worked with J. B. Reade, a pioneer of experimental photography.

His coloured lithograph, 'Head of a Flea', was presented to the Entomological Society of London on 7 May 1838, who adopted it for a poster. Reade's letters to his contemporaries describe how Aldous began his illustrations of microscopy with this illustration, after a drawing, “highly magnified figure of the head of a flea”, derived from his experiments in microscopic photography.

Other works included a portrait of the microscopist and histologist John Thomas Quekett.