Quarks to Quasars

Victorian Microscope Slides

1. A Different View

Credit: Howard Lynk, Victorian Microscope Slides But crossed polarizing filters (called a Polariscope) reveal an entirely different sight.

2. In Awe of the Natural World

Credit: Howard Lynk, Victorian Microscope SlidesIn the mid- to late-19th century, science gripped the public imagination. Literacy rates were rising, feeding demand for books. Theories, put forward in books like Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, about how the natural world came to be fascinated readers. Museums and exhibitions promoted interest in science and devices like the microscope. Microscopes became cheaper, and a popular form of entertainment. Viewers peered through them at specimens they’d collected themselves or slides prepared professionally. The image above shows an ocean-dwelling diatom — a single-celled alga surrounded by a glass-like cell wall.

3. Manipulating Light

Credit: Howard Lynk, Victorian Microscope SlidesSpecial filters used in the microscope transform the pale porpoise bone into the vibrant colors seen above. Polarizing filters eliminate certain wavelengths of light based on the direction in which they vibrate, and, when positioned correctly, they reveal special properties of the specimen, related to how the substance refracts, or bends, the light waves that enter it. This produces what’s known as interference colors. An additional filter, made of the mineral selenite, further alters the behavior of light and changes the colors that the viewer sees.

4. A Little Greenery

Credit: Howard Lynk, Victorian Microscope SlidesFerns were another fad among Victorians. The craze was called “Pteridomania” or Fern Fever. Above, a Victorian-era fern leaf under a microscope. The slide gives no specific information about this fern, although its maker, J.W. Bond, was one of the pioneering early slide mounters, according to Lynk.

(Source: livescience.com)

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    This tugs at my weird love for scientific antiques ; 3;

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