Half-hours with the microscope : being a popular guide to the use of the microscope as a means of amusement and instruction / illustrated from nature by Tuffen West.

  • Tuffen West
Date:
[1875?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Half-hours with the microscope : being a popular guide to the use of the microscope as a means of amusement and instruction / illustrated from nature by Tuffen West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Simple Microscope. Of course many other things' may be added to it, to make it more convenient for observation ; but these are its essential parts. But, although the Simple IMicroscope embraces the essential conditions of all Microscopes, and has, in the hands of competent observers, done so much for science, it is, nevertheless, going out of fashion, and giving way to the Compound Mic^'oscope. Al- though this instrument is much more complicated, as might be inferred from its name, than the Simple Microscope, it is now constructed with so much accuracy, that it can be used with as great certainty and ease as the Simple Microscope itself. In order to understand its construction, we must study the nature of the lens of which we have been speaking. If we take a lens, and hold it against an object on one side, and place a piece of white paper on the other side, we shall find that, at a certain point, a })icture of the object will be produced on the paper. This is the way in which pictures are produced by the camera, of which the photographic artist avails himself for his portraits and sun-drawings. This ])icture of the object, then, exists in the air at a certain point beyond the lens. Now, this picture may be looked at by another glass, of the same character as the first; and by this means the object Ls brought in a very enlarged form to the eye. Now, this is the principle involved in the Com-* ])ound Micro.scope. In order to efi'ect this oljject, a tube (generally a brass tube) is fitted to the object- gla.ss, and at the u]»per part of this tube a gla.ss is fitted on, called an eye-piece. The eye-piece con^ sists generally of two lenses, the object of which i.s to bring the picture in the tube to a condition in which it can be .seen by the eye as readily as it coulil thro\igh the object-glass itself. It is obvious that such an arrangement us this has great ad van-