Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/274

Rh 258 MICROSCOPE fTIHE microscope is an optical instrument for the ex- JL amination of minute objects or parts of objects, which enlarges the visual pictures formed upon the retina of the observer by the rays proceeding from them. Microscopes are distinguished as simple or compound. In the former, the rays which enter the eye of the observer come from an object brought near to it after refraction through either a single lens or a combination of lenses acting as a single lens, its action as a &quot;magnifier &quot; depend ing on its enabling the eye to form a distinct image of the object at a much shorter distance than would otherwise be possible. The latter consists of at least two lenses, so placed relatively to the object, to the eye, and to one another that an enlarged image of the object, formed by the lens placed nearest to it (the &quot; object-glass &quot;), is looked at through the lens nearest the eye (the &quot;eye-glass&quot;), which acts as a simple microscope in &quot;magnifying&quot; it; so that the com pound microscope may be described as a simple microscope used to look at an enlarged image of the object, instead of at the object itself. History of the Simple Microscope. Any solid or liquid transparent medium of lenticular form, having either one convex and one flat surface or two convex surfaces whose axes are coincident, may serve as a &quot; magnifier,&quot; what is essential being that it shall have the power of so refract ing the rays which pass through it as to cause widely diverging rays to become either parallel or but slightly divergent. Thus if a minute object be placed on a slip of glass, and a single drop of water be carefully placed upon it, the drop will act as a magnifier in virtue of the con vexity of its upper surface; so that when the eye is brought sufficiently near it (the glass being of course held horizontally, so as not to distort the spherical curvature of the drop) the object will be seen much enlarged. And if a small hole be made in a thin plate of metal, and a minute drop of water be inserted in it, this drop, having two convex surfaces, will serve as a still more powerful magnifier. There is reason to believe that the magnify ing power of transparent media with convex surfaces was very early known. A convex lens of rock-crystal was found by Layard among the ruins of the palace of Nimrud. And it is pretty certain that, after the invention of glass, hollow spheres blown of that material and filled with water were commonly used as magnifiers (comp. vol. xiv. p. 577). The perfection of gem-cutting shown in ancient gems, especially in those of very minute size, could not have been attained without the use of such aids to the visual power; and there can be little doubt that the artificers who could execute these wonderful works could also shape and polish the magnifiers best suited for their own or others use. Though it is impossible to say when convex lenses of glass were first made by grinding, it is quite certain that they were first generally used to assist ordinary vision as &quot; spectacles,&quot; the use of which can be traced back nearly six centuries ; and not only were spectacle-makers the first to produce glass magnifiers (or simple microscopes), but by them also the telescope and the compound microscope were first invented. There seems no reason to believe, however, that lenses of very high magnifying power (or short focus) were produced until a demand for them had been created by the introduction of the compound microscope, in which such lenses are required as &quot; object-glasses &quot;; and the difficulty of working lenses of high curvature with the requisite accuracy led in the first instance to the employment of globules made by fusing the ends of threads of spun glass. It was in tlr s way that Robert Hooke shaped the minutest of the lenses with which he made many of the numerous discoveries recorded in his Micrographia; and the same method was employed by the Italian microscopist Father Di Torre. It seems to have been Leeuwenhoek that first succeeded in grinding and polishing lenses of such short focus and perfect figure as to render the simple microscope a better instrument for most purposes than any compound micro scope then constructed, its inferiority in magnifying power being more than counterbalanced by the superior clearness of the retinal picture. And, in despair of any such modi fication in the compound form as should remove the optical defects which seemed inherent in its plan of construction, scientific opticians and microscopic observers alike gave their chief attention for a considerable period to the improvement of the simple microscope. In order that the nature of these improvements may be understood, the principle of its action must be first explained. The normal human eye has a considerable power of self- adjustment, by which its focal length is so varied that it forms equally distinct pictures of objects brought within ordinary reading distance (say 10 inches) and of objects whose distance is many times that length, the size of the visual picture of any object diminishing, however, with the increase in the distance to which it is removed, and the amount of detail distinguishable in it following the same proportion. Thus a man who looks across the street at a placard posted on the opposite wall may very distinctly see its general form and the arrangement of its heading, and may be able to read what is set forth in its largest type, whilst unable to separate the lines, still more to read the Avords, of what is set forth below. But by crossing the street so as to bring his eye nearer the picture he finds himself able, to read the smaller type as easily as he before read the larger, the visual picture on his retina having been magnified, say 10 times in linear dimension, by the reduction of the distance of his eye from 40 feet to 4. Similarly, if he holds a page of excessively minute type at arm s length (say 40 inches) from his eye, he may be unable to read it, not because his eye does not form a distinct retinal picture of the page at that distance, but because the details of that picture are too minute for him to distinguish them. But if he brings the page from 40 inches to 10 inches distance, he may be able to read it without difficulty, the retinal picture being enlarged four times linear (or sixteen times superficial) by this approxi mation. Now the rays that enter the eye from each point of a remote object diverge so little as to be virtually parallel ; but the divergence increases with the approxima tion of the object to the eye, and at 10 inches the angle of their divergence is as wide as permits the ordinary eye to bring them to a focus on the retina. When the object is approximated more closely, an automatic contraction of the pupil takes place, so that the most diverging rays of each pencil are cut off, and a distinct picture may be formed (though not without a feeling of strain) when the object is (say) from 5 to 8 inches distant, giving still greater minuteness of visual detail in conformity with the increase of size. A further magnifying power may be obtained without the interposition of any lens, by looking at an object, at 2 or 3 inches distance, through a pin-hole in a card ; for by thus cutting off the more divergent rays of each pencil, so as to admit only those which can be made to converge to a focus on the retina at that distance, a distinct and detailed picture may be obtained, though at the expense of a great loss of light. Moreover,