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What should I do with this?!

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:05 am
by Dottawa
I wonder if anyone here can help with this. I have no knowledge of microscopes. I acquired this microscope and it seems to work well. Looking through the eyepieces though, it does need a good cleaning.
It's been fun to use for the past few months I've had it but I think it could be put to better use, if it's a desirable unit, by someone who knows what they're doing!
Any comments on what it may be worth or if it's obsolete? I can't find any info at Bausch & Lomb.
Of course, if I could find a manual for it and figure out how to clean it up I'd love to keep it and use it!

Re: What should I do with this?!

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 8:32 pm
by PeteM
It's not a valuable microscope, but should be quite usable and fun for anyone who wants to understand the world at a scale 10x-1000x smaller than we'd usually see .

A web search should get you information on cleaning and a $15 or so microscope cleaning kit will provide the brush, blower, lens tissue, and lens cleaner you might need. Try Amazon etc. for that.

Re: What should I do with this?!

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:12 pm
by apochronaut
That is a Bausch & Lomb Academic microscope. They were supplied to schools and universities . They could be fitted out to meet the requirements of the individual school's program, anywhere from a basic one objective primary school unit, to a zoom unit with one zoom objective, to a 4 objective binocular, with many models in between. Almost all of them were monocular and relatively simple. Yours is about as fancy as they got and actually has very fine optics in it. the same as they put in their much larger and considerably more expensive Balplan lab microscope.

That would be a really good microscope for a student of biology who does not have a big budget. I don't think I have ever seen a binocular one before and it has a wide flat field too, 20, possibly 22 mm, which is very very good. It has an abbe condenser in it so can provide much better imaging than most student scopes.

Re: What should I do with this?!

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 11:43 pm
by Dottawa
Thanks. Some additional info I forgot to add above is that the microscope was originally the property of Industry Canada, a federal government department, so it could have been custom made for them if they ordered many. That may explain it being made in a binocular style.