The Microscope And The One Thing You Have To Do Well

Although I don't own a microscope right now, I must admit that I can't hardly walk past one without taking a peek down the lens. I've always been a bit of a lab rat. As a young child some of my favorite toys were a chemistry set and a microscope. I still like to admire Pyrex glass and microscopes whenever I come across them. They have pretty much disappointed me though. Most of the time I can see just about nothing through the lens and shake my head wondering if I still haven't figured out how to use one or if I need the really good ones you see on science programs, the kind that that fill up half a room and display everything on a TV monitor.
A number of years ago, I had my young children at the local science center for some show that involved dinosaurs. We were in the little shop where you could buy science center souvenirs, and there was this cool microscope. It was very crude looking, like something from the middle ages, a brass tube mounted on a piece of iron with a mirror on the bottom for light. I saw the price tag, $90 and thought, "Man, they have some pricey toys in here."
A young young woman that noticed me checking out the 'scope, came over and told me how this was created by a local man that had spent a career in the optics business, working for a company I recognized as a maker of quality binoculars. She said that he spent all of the money putting in the best optics you could get and fabricated the rest in a machine shop. Well, it sure looked like that's what he did. I peered down the lens and could not believe it. I called my wife over and we spent the next 30 minutes grabbing everything we could find and sticking it under that microscope. You see, I looked at microscopes for the visible details that would make them valuable; light source, stereo eyepieces, multiple lenses for varying amounts of zoom, etc. This microscope had none of that. Like I said, it even looked homemade, or like something you might find in one of those nautical antique stores.
But, it did one thing right. I saw images that I had only seen before on television, on those science programs. This guy was smart. He thought, what is the one thing that a microscope has to do well? If I do that, then nothing else matters. If some people won't buy it because of it's looks, then they are the people that buy microscopes without looking down the lens....I'm not sure I want them as customers.
I want to be as smart as that guy.