Stamp of the Day: Antique microscopes
These microscopes would be something to have on your lab bench, desk, or workshop bench! The stamps are from old East Germany (DDR), which I think was home to Leica and other famous optical companies. Three of the pictures microscopes are by Carl Zeiss, from Jena, Germany. The fourth one is French. Can you guess which one is the French one? Just find the one that is not practical to clean, just fancy!
Zeiss is of course still in business, both for fantastic binoculars and microscopes.
Now you can go over and admire the Micropolitan Museum (posted below), and imagining exploring a drop of pond water 200 years ago with these instruments. Imagine the first person that saw something moving in the 'clean' water!
7 comments:
These stamps are so nice, LS!
The microscopic view of our surrounding is something that many are unaware about, and still it affects us hugely.
Also, science would be nothing without microscopic technique.
EH
I recently repaired a pair of Zeiss (8*20) binoculars I was given (in a broken state), spent almost a whole day adjusting them. I thought they were good until I compared them with a similar Leica, costing about $100 more. The subjective difference in optical quality was far more than a hundred dollars. Not in favor of the Zeiss unfortunately. Sometimes ignorance is bliss... ;)
Sometimes it still looks like crap despite using the most sophisticated equipment. ;)
Haha, that scanning electron photo is great! It looks like something human made, but it doesn't say. Maybe a piece of bathroom furniture for protists? Or bacteria suffering from salmonella?
About your repair - maybe you never got them exactly adjusted back to the original state? Is Leica still making binoculars? I know Zeiss is.
I heard that some well-known companies are stopping to make cameras, it is not worth it anymore with all cheap digital cameras around.
"It looks like something human made, but it doesn't say."
Correct, it is a from a silicon chip.
"maybe you never got them exactly adjusted back to the original state?"
It was only one side that was out of adjustment, and the difference was the same even when looking only through the good side. It's not that the Zeiss is bad, not at all. The comparable Leica was just better. I was very surprised and had to ask another person to check as well, with the same result. Everyones eyes are not the same though.
Leica still makes both cameras and binoculars (sometimes called Leitz), but they teamed up with Panasonic to make digital cameras.
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