Edited by GOLGO13, 30 January 2019 - 07:53 PM.

New (vintage) compound microscope
#1
Posted 30 January 2019 - 07:52 PM
- Starman27, Mike E., BFaucett and 1 other like this
#2
Posted 12 February 2019 - 12:37 PM
Very nice GOLGO13!
I really would like to have such an older Bauch and Lomb stand, but they're rare here.
Some microscopes of that era (beginning late 1940's - mid 1950's give or take) show some interesting features, making them some kind of a bridge between the classic inclinable stand with it's horse-shoe shaped foot and the later models.
There's, in that time frame: the introduction of the binocular tube. I don't know who-introduced-what-when-exactly, but by mid the 1950's, microscope brands had such a classic stand and a binocular tube for it: Olympus GB, Reichert R, Leitz L and so on.
Another very interesting feature in that microscope of yours is that it shows another step in the process of the complete rethinking of the focussing mechanism: in your microscope, the coarse focussing moves the tube, while the fine focussing moves the stage.
There were several reasons to rethink the focussing mechanism at that era: limited travel of the fine focussing control, focussing controls not being able to cope with heavy equipment on top of the microscope (camera's!) and so on.
Every manufacturer tried to come up with it's own solution, no doubt. Hensoldt in Germany introduced a fine focussing mechanism with unlimited travel (but still moving the tube and with some weak points)
Others tried, as a first step, to separate coarse and fine focussing in the sense of the coarse focussing moving the tube, the fine focussing moving the stage.
Adapted to the classic microscope stand, it was a dead end, but is was tried bij several manufacturers: Baush and Lomb in the US, PZO in Poland, Nedoptifa (Bleeker-Zeist) in The Netherlands.