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Microscopes for Sale

The collection shown here is not for sale. However, occasionally, I put surplus or duplicate items from the collection or offer for sale items from it to finance new purchases. Unlike other online sales platforms, no overheads or unnecessary fees will be charged here, and the price is determined in advance or through fair negotiations. Items offered for sale here will also be posted on Instagram.

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Case-Mounted Pocket Microscope, Early 19th century

This is an early 19th-century pocket microscope of a relatively rare design. It is reminiscent of the so-called Cary-Gould pocket microscope, which was said to be designed by Charles Gould under the directorship of William Cary in his workshop. In reality, versions of the theme of the pocket microscope, including duplicates signed by different makers who were probably only retailers, were on the English and Continental market during the first four or five decades of the 19th century.

Price: £ 400

including shipping worldwide

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Tourmaline Tongs, ca. 1860

These Tourmaline tongs are coming with a set of specimens of mineral crystal specimens mounted in square paper-covered cork plates (provably by Steeg & Reuter), as seen here. 

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Price: £ 400

including shipping worldwide

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Tourmaline is classified as a semi-precious stone, and the gemstone can be found in various colors. Tourmaline crystals are highly birefringent, a crystallographic feature resulting in the split of a ray of light crossing the crystal outside its optical axis into an ordinary and an extraordinary beam, being polarized at right angles to each other. Tourmaline tongs are a primitive polariscope device having a transparent tourmaline crystal thin section in each half, mounted in cork in independently rotatable oxidized brass disks at the ends of a pair of spring tongs mounted with the transmission axes at right angles to each other. Specimens are slipped between the two tongs and observed by holding the system up to the eye. These specimens contain each a crystal slice set in a specific vibration axis of its optical indicatrix to yield an interference figure (seen in the photos taken with a cellphone camera through the instrument seen here). The device was invented by Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774-1862) as an inexpensive, effective, and easy-to-use polariscope. This early experimental work in physical optics, primarily concerned with studying the polarization of light and the birefringence of crystals, was the first step in creating the field of optical mineralogy. 

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