an early single lens microscope c1680 – reproduced by Zeiss staff as an exercise
Toronto. When I was a kid, an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine showed how the tiny lens of a pen-light 1.5v bulb could be used as a powerful (about 200x) microscope – just like one made by Leeuwenhoek in Delft, Netherlands.
In issue 22-2, editor Everett Roseborough, discussed a tiny Zeiss object (barely a handful) he saw at a 1996 Zeiss Historica meeting. It was a reproduction of the tiny Leeuwenhoek single lens microscope once used to see tiny things including bacteria (the hand-crafted lenses had different focal lengths and were estimated to be anywhere from 50x to 500x magnification).
I mentioned in an earlier post that many camera collectors also collect other strange optical instruments – this was such a device. Ev opens his artcle by saying, “This reproduction of a Leeuwenhoek Microscope is a product of Zeiss Reflex – a company within a company that needs no introduction.
“Michael Kersten of Carl Zeiss Inc., N.Y., showed it to me at the Zeiss Historica meeting at Toronto, and having one in my collection became imperative.
“Zeiss Reflex is a company where new employees in marketing, technology and other phases of company policy and activity receive training. They decide on projects and carry them to completion. I believe these replicas are part of the apprenticeship program.
“In the pamphlet which accompanies the replica, Zeiss maintains that Leeuwenhoek was a baker by trade, this could be a translation error as was “von” Leeuwenhoek.
“The instrument is beautifully polished but I feel that the good Antoni ‘s handiwork would not have been, but rather blackened.
“He was the first man to see bacteria, which he obtained from his teeth, animalculae [tiny beings in pond water], circulating blood and spermatozoa. Spontaneous generation theory was disproven even before Pasteur.”
Members read the rest of Ev’s article in the pdf file for issue 22-2 on the free members-only DVD. Joining the PHSC is easy – see above or at right. Any questions, please email Lilianne at member@phsc.ca.
