MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hi all

I found this 'beauty' (my opinion, not my wife's) in an antique shop this afternoon and couldn't go past it. Originally I thought it was an microscope, but after bringing it home and playing with it I think it is a measuring devise of some sort, but I have no idea of what.

At the bottom, by the gold mirror, the tube is adjustable in length and marked out in graduations printed in mirror image (see photo).

It has a mirror and planoconvex lens mounted to the LHS of the main tube that delivers the light through the bottom of the 'stage', and a pivoting mechanism of no obvious purpose of mounted between the objective lens (inside the tube, can't be seen in photos) and the eyepiece.

Could anyone shed some light on what this piece of equipment is? I'd love to find out some more about it and get it functioning.

Cheers,

It is a very, very early vertometer or, what today, we call a lensometer. When you purchase new glasses, this is the device that finds the center of a lense blank as well as verifying the power of the blank. You could also use this to measure the strength of your glasses. Today, most modern lens/glasses dispensaries use computer controlled lensometers. I've included a diagram of a modern machine (probably a Parco).

Your lensometer may be missing part of the "inker" for marking the lens - it looks like I'm seeing an ink reservoir drum.

NICE SCORE!
JeffO

I take back that last part of my previous reply... I see the marker up in the reservoir on your machine

Awesome! Thank you JeffO - this makes sense as it also came with a box of old lenses, each in an individual envelope, with spots imprinted on them.

Well I'll have fun looking this up now and trying to figure out how it works!

Cheers,

Great response JeffO

Thanks to your naming of the instrument, I quickly found this:
http://doclibrary.com/MSC167/PRM/216570-1013232.pdf

MichaelG.