rn8080 wrote:
Hi Pierre, Gordon,
Sorry Gordon,
but I doubt Pierre's microscope is a Zeiss GFL.
The shape
of the GFL stand is a nice smooth curve, Pierre's
microscope
makes an angle.
The GFL stand base (foot) has a hole in
its bottom back for a lamp
socket "tube" to be
inserted.
If you look at Pierre's second picture taken
from the back, there is
no hole in the base of his
scope.
According to two of my Zeiss German documentations
(a very nice 41
pages booklet with numerous pictures and an 8
pages prices list),
Pierre's microscope looks very much like a
Zeiss-OPTON Stativ-W
model. The booklet's front page shows the
same scope as the one on
the first picture of Pierre but with
an elegant logo "Zeiss Opton"
engraved under the big
stage control knob which is missing on
<snip>
|
Pierre's (that's why he can't identified it!)..
Here are
different characteristics I can find from the
documentations
(they are dated 1952, January 31 for the prices list)
which
should be useful to help Pierre to check if his microscope
is
indeed a Zeiss-Opton (but perhaps I am wrong because I only
deduce
them from the pictures):
* The first thing which
seems to make easy to recognize a Zeiss-
Opton is the unusual
binocular with its round shaped base and the
graduation marks
(please look at Pierre's second picture) but I am
not familiar
with the pre-WW II microscopes so perhaps this kind of
binocular
already existed before. It surely does not exist for post-
WW
II Standard, GFL, WL, Universal etc. West Zeiss microscopes.
*
The stage holder is not the Zeiss Standard semi-circular 4
screws
type but is a semi-full (void in its middle) disk with,
underneath,
in its middle, a female bayonet thread for fixing
the condenser (see
below).
* The condenser seems to be
fixed directly to the stage holder
(which acts also as a
condenser holder) by a bayonet-like thread
(like an objective
on a SRL camera?). You never find this kind of
fixation in the
other post-WW II West Carl Zeiss microscopes.
* A picture
of the bottom part of the optovar shows a round dovetail
but
with a bayonet fixation. So I presume (there are no
pictures)
it's the same dovetail shape for the fixation of the
binocular and
the phototube. In comparison, the corresponding
parts (condensers,
mono and binocular tubes, phototubes,
optovar etc.) of the other
West Carl Zeiss microscopes all
have a strictly male rounded
dovetail shape.
* The
incident (transmitted) illumination comes from a 15W lamp
socket
installed in an unusual huge hole in the stand's base,
beneath
the condenser. So there is no hole at the bottom back of
the
stand as like the Zeiss Standard to insert a lamp socket
tube, nor
the possibility to put a mirror under the condenser
because the hole
in the base looks very large.
* Most
of the accessories (eyepieces, objectives, condensers,
POL
filters, light source, power supply) are engraved with
the
logo "Zeiss- Opton". The binocular don't seem to
have this engraving
nor the optovar but perhaps it's because I
don't have the right
picture angle.
In conclusion, in
my opinion, the Zeiss OPTON is a post-WW II high
level
microscope (it's versatile, with Phase contrast and POL, 6
types
of condenser one being of a Zernike pancake type,
optovar
etc.).
The first Zeiss GFL was made as early as
1949 (please
see
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/museum/taylorzeiss.html
<http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/museum/taylorzeiss.html>)
so the
Zeiss-Optonis is contemporary to the Zeiss GFL, but
technically, its
specifications make it a pre-Zeiss Standard
(and GFL) scope (no real
vertical illumination for example),
its accessories seem not to be
interchangeable with their
Zeiss Standard counterparts, the fixation
methods not being
the same.
In case Pierre's scope is a Zeiss-Opton, the
next question will be
to explain why it does not have the logo
"Zeiss Opton" engraved on
the stand.
According
to
http://www.company7.com/zeiss/history.html
<http://www.company7.com/zeiss/history.html>
"Carl Zeiss -
A History Of A Most Respected Name In
Optics", the brand name Zeiss
Opton began to be used
after 1947 in West Germany.
A hypothesis could be that
Pierre's microscope is a very early
version, before the brand
name "Zeiss Opton" was officially used
in
1947?
Another hypothesis could be that in the
confusion of the immediate
post-WW II, this type of microscope
was also manufactured by the
East German Zeiss at Jena, in
parallel with the official West German
Zeiss-Opton production?
(the design of the Opton scope was perhaps
conceived before
the separation of Germany in two parts?). I know
nothing about
the East German Jena scope production but I remember
having
seen on Ebay the bayonet dovetail style on few of
their
scopes.
A third explanation could be that it is a
clone made by a third
party, but I doubt, because immediately
after WW II there were not
so many manufacturers able to
produce microscopes of this quality.
And after that, what
was the history of the Zeiss-Opton ?
Best regards,
Roger
|
