Looking for information on this Bausch & Lomb Microscope

[PaulEK]

Hi folks,

I got this microscope just before it was thrown in the trash at a local school. Other than the maker, there is no information on just what model it is, and I'm curious. I tried looking for images online of similar scopes, but, oh boy, are there a lot of images of the vast array of B&L scopes out there! The serial number doesn't show up in the photos, but it's 2133AM, if that helps.

This is surprisingly solid in build quality: All metal, and heavy. Very smooth movement, too, when adjusting any of the controls. The color looks like the beige that was really common in the 1980s and 90s.

I'm just very curious to know more about it.

Paul K.

[imkap]

Great you saved it... Looks nice,
I don't have any info

[apochronaut]

B & L stopped producing student and small lab microscopes sometime in the lwte 1970's maybe and 1960's respectively. I think labour cost and skills training were factors. They concentrated their skilled labour resources on their flagship models : the Balplan, the Microzoom and the various Stereozooms, all made in Rochester.
For their small lab scopes they contracted production to offshore producers , first Olympus for the Galen I, then Kyowa for the Galen II, then a Chinese factory for the Galen III. On some of them they supplied the base and illuminator. The last student microscope they made in Rochester was the Academic line but it was a pretty fancy student microscope with Balplan optics.
Your microscope doesn't have much in common, nothing in fact with any Rochester instruments, nor the Olympus based second tier instrument from the 1960's. It does have something in common with the Kyowa line, though. Similarity in structural design, enamel colour and the objective design. I have never seen it before and I have looked at B & L microscopes for years and years. I can only guess based on that, it is short lived Japanese import from Kyowa, they brought in to supplement their Academic line around 1980 or thereabouts. The Academic must have priced itself out of the market by about then and the Japanese products were still much cheaper due to a huge diffference in wages. Not long after Bausch & Lomb sold their scientific instrument division to Cambridge Instruments and the fusion with AO began.
B & L as a brand began to disappear, first becoming Cambridge, then some of it Reichert and later Leica. There are products made in the Rochester factory that were marketed under 5 brand names in just over 10 years.
You might find a similar or identical microscope branded with another name.
Could slso be Chinese but something about it says Kyowa to me.

[hans]

Looks close to these Cambridge Instruments and Leica branded "StrataLab" models on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/312568716638
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224445518547

[PaulEK]

Thanks for the excellent information!I peeled off a sticker just now, which was on the bottom of the scope. It had been placed over the metal plaque describing the lamp used in the microscope. It has 'China' written in the corner. So that makes it clearer that this is not anything made by B&L, now that I have the background on their history from apochronaut.

The scope I have looks to be almost identical to the Leica branded Stratalab scope in the second link from hans. The Cambridge version has a different diaphragm structure, which is housed below the table, rather than being concealed within it.

I am quite new to microscopes, and am grateful for all the knowledge and expertise I find here. I plan to keep exploring and asking questions! There's some crossover, though, with other interests: I love both telescopes and old cameras and lenses, and have for decades. B&L made both telescopes and camera lenses, so it's sort of sad to see that the name is not really connected to any of the past anymore. Wollensak is another company that once made all sorts of optics in Rochester, including microscopes, and it still has a presence, but in name only. (Ha! I just did some searching, and found that Wollensak split off from another company way back in 1899: Bausch & Lomb!) Some of the best old camera lenses I own are from Wollensak, and there is century-old glass from them is still highly sought after, not just by collectors, but by large format photographers.

[apochronaut]

Well, B & L was a unique company. Both B & L and AO were very innovative but very small and as the business world demanded ever larger companies with gov't support ( read ; Japanese and German), they had to rely on innovation alone. A hard row to hoe in the 1980's business worlf.