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On sale at a supermarket called Lidl in Spain for €20
Enough plastic to put a child off microscopy for life?

75RR wrote:On sale at a supermarket called Lidl in Spain for €20
Enough plastic to put a child off microscopy for life?

So true, I totally agree !!
But, I would blame the size of the scope, in addition to the material it is made off. The small control knobs, small FOV, probably poor illumination, combine to make it anti-ergonomic and an anti-child tool.
In contrast, I brought 7-year old kids to watch specimens through my normal-sized microscope, and they were fascinated; used two eyes to conveniently watch, and manipulated the focus.

It can't be bad, it has 600x magnification!

Perfect for travelling, it is an unbeatable lightweight

This sort of thing is, to my mind, near to the criminal. If he had the choice between a blurred and uninterpretable image representing science and reason or a sword-brandishing goblin in luridly bright colours and full 3D representing stupid popular culture, which would the average child choose?

I had the great honour of learning the ropes on a beautiful Watson Bactil, c. 1930s, with my dearest childhood friend and teacher, an elderly algologist. Of course, that was tutored learning rather than undirected (and, with so delicate an instrument, practically certainly catastrophic) exploration.

I would recommend a Vickers stereomicroscope for an intelligent child -- I received one when the same dear old gentleman died, it's a wonderful thing and as good as indestructible!

Lidl is a shop of which my family and I am very fond, although their labour practices are deplorable. An excellent source of cheap decent food, odd bottles of Graf-von-Ersatz pudding wine, plain but certainly good enough for me foreign chocolate, perfectly good fresh fruit and some lovely flower-arrangements, at least in the UK. Scientific instrument maker? I think not...

Some ten years ago there was the Lidl Mikroskop Bresser, MEADE BIOLUX AL for about 60,- €. It was at least for its price not that bad. But obviously it is always possible to make something cheap and worse.
Few weeks ago I also tried the "Lidlscope", a telescope sold by Lidl "Bresser 70/700 Skylux". Not that bad for that money and I still have fun observing Moon, Mars and Saturn

Around 1970 there used to be a microscope teaching kit by Kosmos. It included a kit microscope with about 100x magnification, a good book and some things to get started. This really was a good start into microscopy. Even at chinese manufacturing costs it wouldn't be possible to sell it for 20€ today, but probably for 40€. It would be a much better value!

When I was a kid, and starting to get interested in microscopes, my parents got me a copy of The Microscope and How to Use It, by Dr. Georg Stehli, english edition. I was fascinated by the "Humboldt" microscope featured in the book, especially the simple Victorian style single objective nosepiece. I thought it looked real cool.

More recently I did some Googling, and it looks like it was made by Kosmos, maybe back in the 1950s. I saw one on Ebay a few years ago, but I wasn't buying any more microscopes at the time. It looks like it wasn't a toy, but a simple low cost version of a real microscope with standard size optics.

My first microscope was a toy, made by Lionel-Porter. It was mostly metal, but the optics were simple lenses and probably not much better than the toy shown above. My next microscope was a Tasco 50 to 750 power, if I remember correctly, with a nifty zoom eyepiece that required radical refocusing when adjusting the zoom. Optically it wasn't a whole lot better then the Lionel-Porter model. Tasco also made some microscopes with standard size optics at the time, but they weren't seen in the local department stores. Photos of them were on the boxes of the toy models, though.

My first real microscope was a gift from my parents when I graduated high school. It is a monocular Leitz stand from the 1930s, with 3, 6L, and 1/12 Oel objectives and a 10x periplan eyepiece with a deep gouge in the top lens. The eyepiece still worked fairly well unless I stopped down the condenser diaphragm too much, then the gouge became real apparent in the field of view.

I still have it, and kind of regret that I pestered my parents to get some accessories for it because I didn't pursue a career in Biology like I had previously planned.

Last year I took the objectives off temporarily and mounted them on my 4 series stand, for more comfortable binocular viewing. Even though the corrections in the tube lens and eyepieces probably aresn't correct for those objectives, it didn't seem to affect image quality as far as I could tell.

But then my eyesight isn't as sharp as when I was young.

Sorry for the thread drift.

Hi Rick,
these KOSMOS Humbold microscopes were sold for several decades and in different levels of equipment. KOSMOS never made them themselves, they were made by german second row quality microscope companies like Hertel & Reuss. KOSMOS always had lesser models and also kits to build simple microscopes and a microscope work material box with stains and mountants. These material boxes were quite nice as they offered a common basic equipment for microscopy amateurs.
There have been pre-war brass models of the Humboldt microscope or perhaps the Humbold "Forschungsmikroskop E", an even more advanced model.

I myself started with a 1200x mail order microscope, unfortunately not with the much better LOMO that was sold by the competing mail order company.
It really was a bad instrument and kit with many parts but none of them quite right. My advance was limited at the time by a lack of supply of ideas and supplies.

Maybe it would be the right time now to put together a new microscope work material kit, fitting to todays possibilities and limitations!
With microscopy projects limited to the materials of the kit and shown in forums like this the beginner would have it much easiert to get started.

A lot more information on the Humbodt microscopes can be found here:
https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/index.php?topic=1509.0
https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/index.php?topic=8863.0


Bob

The old standby in my area was "TASCO"....

BillT

"I had the great honour of learning the ropes on a beautiful Watson Bactil, c. 1930s, with my dearest childhood friend and teacher, an elderly algologist. Of course, that was tutored learning rather than undirected (and, with so delicate an instrument, practically certainly catastrophic) exploration."

Seeing how Watson is a rare brand here in the USA compared to others, I would not waste a dime on one....
BillT

billbillt wrote:Seeing how Watson is a rare brand here in the USA compared to others, I would not waste a dime on one....BillT

I myself would, absolutely! English microscope manufacturers dominated the world market until the smaller and cheaper continetal microscope took over in the mid-1900s. At the time of the Watson Bactil they seem to have produced only comparatively small numbers, but in a special caring and oldfashioned way. Very likeable - for me. For me it would have been great to have had an itroduction into microscopy from an expert and using such a nice instrument, but this was nowhere in sight.

Bob

Bob, thanks for the links! Great pictures. I opened one of the linked pages in Google translator, good reading, worked pretty well.