MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

While looking at EBay it would seem that for 160mm systems Olympus and Nikon are/were the most common with Zeiss running in third place.

I would be interested in hearing the history of inverted scopes and who the dominant companies were.

Bausch and Lomb presented an inverted scope in the 19th century. It didn't really catch on right away and they stopped making inverted scopes until the projection scope design from mid century or the I think Photozoom a little while later. They also sold a few inverted metalloscopes now and then that were special I guess, not so common on the used market anyhow.

Objectives marked with 1.2mm correction are most likely for inverted.
Also see plenty Nikon as such with 210 tube length.
It may be I notice Nikon more but they seem to have been a popular choice.
I have a GTvision XDY ∞ PL PH with 30w halogen but it's probably not common.

Beside those already named the Hund Wilovert, the Leitz Diavert, Labovert and Fluovert were quite popular. The Leica DMIL was and is sold in high number and easily found on the used market. Popularity may vary from market to market.

The Zeiss IM 35 was a popular inverted microscope. Very large and heavy machine.
But for low -mag observation of specimens in petri dishes, much smaller phase-contrast inverted microscopes are ubiquitous for example in tissue culture and cell growth labs. Olympus CK and similar. With coarse focusing only and no mechanical stage.