A dream of two collectors – a father and a son – comes to life.
In the 1960’s, the passion for engineering and history lead one person, Rui Aguilar, to start acquiring optical devices. Initially without a defined purpose, the collection kept growing.
40 years later, a massive 2000 piece optical device collection was stored in a garage.
The interest in the collection passed on to his son, Sergio Aguilar, which spent its time rediscovering these antiques from old storage boxes.
With objects ranging from the 17th Century until late 20th Century, every optical device we know had some representation in the collection. It started to become obvious that this shouldn’t be private no more, such was the beauty of it.
Since 2014, when the idea of the museum first came up, there has been an unstoppable effort in the cataloging and organization of the collection, as well as a considerable increase in the amount of objects added yearly.
And so it is, from a private initiative to create an out-of-the-ordinary museum, the Madeira Optics Museum is born and we – Rui and Sergio Aguilar – are very pleased to have you share this bit of history with us!