Description
Although Robert Stewart Whipple purchased his first antique instrument in 1913, it was not until the 1920s that his collection really began to grow. This is one of the first hundred objects that Whipple acquired, and demonstrates the early development of his taste for historic scientific artefacts and books.

Shortly after acquiring this instrument in March 1921, Whipple restored it to working order with a new eyepiece from the firm of Beck.
07/10/2025
Created by: Hannah Price on 07/10/2025

Description
The compound microscope was developed during the 17th Century and was closely related to the refracting telescope. Its popularity increased after the publication of Robert Hooke’s (1635-1703) Micrographia in 1665. Micrographia contained detailed pictures, never before seen, of insects magnified using a compound microscope.

A compound microscope uses two or more lenses. The lenses are held at certain distances from each other and are mounted inside a rigid tube. The tube was usually made from pasteboard, ivory or most commonly brass. The basic compound microscope magnifies an image in two stages -

Stage one: Light from a mirror is reflected up through the specimen into a powerful objective lens.

Stage two: The image produced by the objective lens is magnified again by the eye lens, which works like a simple magnifying lens.

The first compound microscope consisted of a simple barrel which would have been held up to the light. Later developments ensured that the compound microscope had a stable base, usually a brass stand and a side pillar.

In the 17th Century, the compound microscope had some serious drawbacks which made it easier to use a simple microscope (which have only one lens) instead. The image produced by a compound microscope was often affected by two types of aberrations known as chromatic and spherical. These aberrations caused blurring to the image (spherical) and the edge of the specimen to colour (chromatic). Chromatic aberration was removed at the end of the 18th Century by Harmanus van Deijlan, an instrument maker in Amsterdam. In 1830, spherical aberration was overcome by Joseph Lister, who developed the achromatic lens. Achromatic lenses became widely used in microscopes in the 1850s and are still used today.


Created by: Corrina Bower