HELP: IDENTIFY STRANGE APPARATUS WITH OBJECTIVE 10X AND FILTERS

[stjepo]

I need to identify this strange apparatus. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Starting at the top a rotating mirror, below a holder for a yellow filter with the number 6 or 9 on the metal, below an adjustable 10X objective, below a clip to hold a small black box perhaps containing some type of sample in a small slot, under a small yellow filter with the number 6 or 9 on the metal. All on top of a cylinder with a small hole that contains a methacrylate prism inside.



The images will be more explanatory.

[stjepo]

More pictures

[stjepo]

Last one:

[stjepo]

More:

[PeteM]

It looks like a projection microscope.

The puzzler is the tall cylindrical column, which (not entirely sure from the pictures) houses a square and tall methacrylate plastic piece. A possibility is that the plastic was used as a condenser and/or UV filter, and the entire apparatus then attached to some sort of arc lamp source.

[stjepo]

As always, you are very kind in trying to help me whenever I have questions. What you say seems to make a lot of sense. I have sent an email to the Spanish National Museum of Science and Technology to see if I can get any additional information, if I get it I will put it here.

I found a device similar to the top part of the device I have shown.
https://www.ebay.de/itm/334978568307?ch ... esQAvD_BwE


Thank you very much for your time PeteM

Steve

[apochronaut]

You may be able to track down the mfg. from details such as threading and finish. That might help identify it's purpose, if you can find some company documentation. It does seem like something to do with UV based on the yellow filtration and the design that reflects the image to a screen, rather than direct viewing.
Reichert is the only company I have seen use a green hammered lacquer and in the 50's through to 60's. Most others used grey and of course black. Someone used brown, perhaps Baker. If the screws are metric, I would lay odds on the maker being European and most likely Reichert. If the threads are BSF or BSW, it is English. They switched to metric slowly but I would think it is of an era that would still have used British Standard threads, if English made. Unlikely to be American and if, would have SAE threads.
The design and grooving on the long rail locking screw knob looks familiar but I can't quite recall where I have seen it. Maybe my memory will cough it up yet.

[Phill Brown]

I have a similar paint finish on an automatic watch cleaning machine.
That's a Urema Automat.
Most I came up with is that's 1950's English.

[apochronaut]

The Reichert MAK stereo microscopes , made between the late 40's and maybe as late as the early 60's were painted in a very similar paint. Here is one from a reddit post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/microscopy/com ... ?rdt=38337

[PeteM]

Mitutoyo precision instruments were once painted a similar green hammer tone paint, as seen here and below:
https://shop.idealprec.com/products/mit ... onditioned

The company also made various optical projectors and comparators, so there's a slight chance they made your strange projection (?) apparatus.

A closer examination of the 10x objective might yield a country of origin. I'd suspect that early on, Mitutoyo sourced their optics from another Japanese company.

.
.

Mitutoyo early paint.png (486.15 KiB) Viewed 30064 times

[apochronaut]

yea could also be. I have an oddball Japanese stereo, probably from the 60's that has a similar hammered green paint. Japanese would also have used metric but the screw tensile strength would have been lower. Difficult to determine that without actual samples but the Japanese build quality was definitely crappy in the 60's. I have seen stuff marked made in jaran.

[stjepo]

Thank you apochromat, Phil Brown and as usual PeteM, all have given me very smart and useful recommendations.

Yes the screws are metric and the hammered gray paint may be from the fifties. I have used different image search engines without any success.

I bought a Nikon SMZ 1 (launched in 1961) time ago and it came with a wooden box full of its accessories, with the same hammered gray paint on it as you can see in the picture. I don’t know whether or the box comes from Japan as the SMZ1. Also I found a similar box as an accessory on a Vintage 1950s Reichert Universal Camera Microscope MeF D P100 A & Accessories.


As far as my inquiry with the Spanish Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología I have not yet received any information but just a bureaucratic paper that I have already filled an sent it back, bureaucracy at its prime. I will keep you informed.

Regards

Steve

[PeteM]

One more possible angle on this (see second picture and also the other Nachet scope below): https://www.genten.be/en/shop/article/9 ... HET_FRANCE It has somewhat the same design ethic and it might have been a shorter trip from France to your hands.

FWIW, the hammered paint (green or gray) was used not only by Mitutoyo after WWII but NSK and some other Japanese instrument makers.
.
.

Nachet microscope-France.png (499.5 KiB) Viewed 29963 times

[stjepo]

Yes, it is possible that it found its way from France, we are close.

Thanks to the clue you game me and using as search word "NACHET MICROSCOP vintage" I found this. I am not sure if it is a NACHET. The logo in the objective may give us a clue of the microscope brand name.

https://stock.adobe.com/images/vintage- ... /196690904

[stjepo]

It looks like it's a Russian MBR-1 microscope. (LOMO)


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 0%A0-1.jpg

[apochronaut]

It is not the type of finish that is relavent , it is the colour and blend of the paint. Almost every microscope mfg. used a hammered finish at one time and almost all used grey or silver. Pigmented hammer lacquer is more expensive, mostly because grey , being the default colour is mass produced in immense quantities. The finish is created by the addition of mica or metal powders, so individual paint manufacturers products look different, with larger or smaller pools or more or less irridescence.
Instrument makers develop a design ethos, a part of which is the finish : a tool for clients and customers to identify with the product. It is cheaper to paint items , if they are all the same colour due to economy of scale, so new or small production custom items are most often finished with something on hand.

I would specifically be looking at whoevever used green as the possible maker. I doubt if any mfg. not already using an expensive finish such as green hammertone would buy such a finish for one item, not to mention paint shop concerns of time and equipment and skills.

There was also a wrinkle finish , which was a baked enamel. In photos and from a distance wrinkle can be confused with hammer sometimes but not in hand.

[stjepo]

It is not the type of finish that is relavent , it is the colour and blend of the paint. Almost every microscope mfg. used a hammered finish at one time and almost all used grey or silver. Pigmented hammer lacquer is more expensive, mostly because grey , being the default colour is mass produced in immense quantities. The finish is created by the addition of mica or metal powders, so individual paint manufacturers products look different, with larger or smaller pools or more or less irridescence.
Instrument makers develop a design ethos, a part of which is the finish : a tool for clients and customers to identify with the product. It is cheaper to paint items , if they are all the same colour due to economy of scale, so new or small production custom items are most often finished with something on hand.

I would specifically be looking at whoevever used green as the possible maker. I doubt if any mfg. not already using an expensive finish such as green hammertone would buy such a finish for one item, not to mention paint shop concerns of time and equipment and skills.

There was also a wrinkle finish , which was a baked enamel. In photos and from a distance wrinkle can be confused with hammer sometimes but not in hand.

apochronaut, you may be right.

[stjepo]

This message is for everyone who tried to help me identify the purpose of the device, to all of whom I am very grateful.

As I had promised, I inform you that the Science Museum in Spain believes that it is a prototype but they have not been able to determine what its purpose was and that it has no relationship with any device that they familiar with.


Regards

Steve

[apochronaut]

Well at least it is a protototype. They could have decided it was an amateurotype !

[PeteM]

I believe the best bet is a projection microscope, perhaps mounted to something like a carbon arc or other bright lamp source.

The top part is entirely consistent with a projection microscope. A first surface mirror would go into the small pivoting rectangular box, and be adjusted to project an image to a screen or viewing surface.

The long cylindrical barrel and the length of square prism glass between the opening at the bottom and the stage are a bit of a puzzle. The square opening at the bottom looks like a method of attachment. Decades ago, as a college student, I worked various music and theater events, sometimes running a carbon-arc spotlight (for James Brown, Three Dog Night, Ice Capades, Disney on Parade, even evangelical preachers arguing who should pay for the spotlight and where I could pick up the member of the audience who would throw away their crutches). The attachment on the bottom looks to be reminiscent of theater-type gel attachments for spotlights.

The long glass prism might be a method of reducing IR radiation into the sample. It could also help collimate light from the source since the sides would have internal reflection at oblique angles.

The other puzzle is the black specimen box that fits the slide clips. Or perhaps it is part of an additional condenser, wave plate, or?? Be interesting to know what, if anything, went into it. Is there any residue?

[stjepo]

Very good idea PeteM

There are some particles inside that are yellowish and look like plastic, they do not dissolve.

I send images.

Regards

Steve

[PeteM]

Glass fragments?? Perhaps someone here will have a better idea.

Putting the specimen between crossed polars might yield some additional information?

[stjepo]

Great idea PeteM.

Now someone who is an expert in interpreting these images.

Regards

[stjepo]

More...

[PeteM]

Here's a B&L version of projection microscope: https://www.ebay.com/itm/276149700191

[tpruuden]

Check, if it is slightly more radioactive compared to background. The prism might be scintillator?

[stjepo]

Here's a B&L version of projection microscope: https://www.ebay.com/itm/276149700191

You always surprise me!!

Thanks that picture I found this ones

proyector 01.jpg (50.77 KiB) Viewed 29441 times

!!!https://www.ebay.com.my/itm/364227850663

360_29e378ac1b9c5e2cf4c0fbbda440c30e.jpg (63.31 KiB) Viewed 29441 times

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ ... -470818093

PeteM, Thanks to you we have found the answer!!!

Regards


Steve

[stjepo]

Check, if it is slightly more radioactive compared to background. The prism might be scintillator?

tpruuden, "Check, if it is slightly more radioactive compared to background" excuse my ignorance could you tell me how can I do that?

"The prism might be scintillator?" Do you mean the prism that is under the device?

[apochronaut]

The instrument's mechanism points to a projection microscope, that much is certain but to what end? That is the real question.
Many projection microscopes were demonstration microscopes, made for putting micro images up on a screen or wall so groups of people could view them in a seminar or tutorial setting : basically a general purpose BF microscope with 3 objectives, a high output lamp and reflecting mirror used like a delineoscope. Some companies catalogued these, B & L and several others, one of which only made projection microscopes. The mirror could be top or at the bottom , if the lamp was up top and the microscope inverted. They are still popular in China and India, where the student to teaching aid and faculty ratio can be enormous.

This one is different because it seems custom made for a specific type of microscopy, almost as though the subject matter dictated that the viewing had to be remote. I'm pretty sure the yellow filters hold the key to it's purpose, seeming similar to the uv filtering found on more modern fluorescence microscopes.

[tpruuden]

The methacrylate prism reminded me plastic scintillators where the plastic matrix carries fluorescent material responding to ionizing radiation excitation. Cherenkov/scintillaton characterization maybe? UV block with yellow filters etc. Just pure speculation...

Check, if it is slightly more radioactive compared to background. The prism might be scintillator?

tpruuden, "Check, if it is slightly more radioactive compared to background" excuse my ignorance could you tell me how can I do that?

"The prism might be scintillator?" Do you mean the prism that is under the device?