The little Tasco did a fine job of hooking me on microscopy for life, so as a young adult I wasted little time acquiring this pre-war Spencer Model 33 MH monocular microscope as surplus from the University of Houston biology lab in the early 1980's. 

This instrument had been enduring the rigors of the classroom since it was new in 1940, and I can never get over how tight, solid, and relatively unscathed it remains today. Its age may be somewhat evident in the styling and present finish, but certainly not in function; it works like brand new - buttery smooth and crisply  precise. Which is half the fun of owning and using older scopes like this: just feeling those frictionless gliding motions whenever you turn a knob. It's also surprisingly heavy. Microscopes of this make and era just have a particularly lovely feel to them all the way around!

And ya just gotta dig the vintage look! 

Quite a long spell later, this very closely related pre-war "Black Beauty" followed me home: a Spencer Model 13 MLH with inclined binocular head. 

Using both eyes was a huge stride forward in observing comfort, which led me to spend much more time observing; and that is when the hobby really took off.

But because the cost of going binocular is a need for greater illumination intensity on account of the beam splitter and prism arrangement inside the head (see below), I quickly acquired a Spencer 735 research grade lamp from the same era to go with it ... and then set about learning how to use it properly.

This advanced focusing lamp with iris diaphragm not only provides more robust illumination, but allows me to set up for true Kohler illumination*, which dramatically improves contrast and resolution over a simple illuminator as seen with the Model 33 above.  

A piece of thin plywood underneath is marked with lamp and stand positions to make setup easier, as achieving true Kohler can be a little tricky. The Spencer Lens Company actually offered a similar wooden board accessory for this very purpose, and spotting it while researching old catalogs is where the idea came from. Wonder if any original ones still exist?

To this scope I added a set of modern Olympus objectives and modern wide-field eyepieces. It is now leaps and bounds ahead of my original one-eyed Spencer!

Here's the inside a Spencer Model 13 bino head: lots of prisms and a beam splitter. It is upside-down in this picture.

There are something like ten optical surfaces that the light must pass through or bounce off en route from objective to eyepieces, plus one beam splitter. A monocular 'scope has none of this; light passes directly from objective to eyepiece with no middleman. A seemingly simple step up from one eyepiece to two is actually an order of magnitude in complexity, cost, and lighting requirement.

Also because of all that extra glass, keeping things clean is very important, and that is why the head is taken apart in this picture -- for cleaning.

Speaking of which, the device atop the vertical trinocular tube is my first dedicated camera, a Celestron digital imager. While perhaps no miracle of performance, and for all practical purposes you must provide your own software, it is inexpensive and adds immense enjoyment to the hobby, so all things considered, I call it  well worth the money. I have since upgraded to an Amscope 3 MP USB Camera, which comes with very nice software.

This scope also features a very seldom seen or mentioned "Micro Glide" stage. You gently push it in any direction, and it indeed glides in a very precise and controlled manner. It's great for scanning about, and simply unbeatable for following live protists as they dash about in a pond water sample wet mount! Even though I have to say I prefer an X-Y mechanical stage, I am delighted to own and get to know this one.

History Note: About the time the Series 2 and 4 stands appeared, the name American Optical, or AO, took precedence over Spencer.

Here I made something of an epochal leap from the 160mm tube length optics of yore, to the more recent infinity corrected gear, when I assembled this AO Series 10 with 1031 lamp from parts and pieces collected over time from eBay.

The very satisfactory result features a startlingly excellent set of rare bright phase contrast objectives in four magnifications. It is also equipped with polarizing capability. With this setup I can switch between bright field, dark field, phase contrast, and POL, with a few simple adjustments in seconds. The views are simply wonderful.

A word about AO Series 10 illuminators: The halogen bulb 1031 lamp is often considered the most desirable of the several offered for Series 10 stands because it's center-able, and has a self-contained transformer that eliminates a separate power supply transformer, which is often missing in today's bargains, and bad for bench clutter when it is present. The halogen bulb 1036 and 1036A lamps are similar, but the 1036A lamp has a centering adjustment, the 1036 does not. The incandescent bulb 1037 is a simple diffuse substage light which gives no adjustment whatever other than on and off.

This scope has become my travel companion with its relatively compact design and sleek, highly functional AO case. Originally equipped with the 1031 lamp, I have reconfigured a 1036A to LED which operates on a 4 AA battery pack tucked into the base. 

AO Series 10 scopes hail from the 1960's.

"Inverted microscope", what the heck is that? Why, it's just what it sounds like: an upside-down microscope! With this arrangement, the light source is up at the top, the condenser below it, then the stage. Underneath the stage is the nosepiece with objective turret. So instead of looking down upon the specimen, as with conventional microscopes, you peer up at it from below with this baby.

Why? Simply put, the idea is to maintain a constant working distance between objective and sample, which allows observation of living protists and cultures in much larger sample containers which more closely approximate natural environments.  Inverted microscopes are occasionally referred to as "biological microscopes" for this reason.

This is not only hugely useful for the study of protozoa and microflora, but let's face it - inverted microscopes are just plain cool looking!

This model also hails from the mid 1960's.

This one came to me at a bargain price because it was missing its bulb holder and power supply, and replacements are notoriously difficult to obtain. But I wanted to experiment with an LED light source, so it was the perfect deal for me. The conversion works even better than hoped: more than sufficient intensity, color a very neutral white, and the lack of heat in the lamphouse is a real wonder. Guess I can forget about using the lamp cooling vent as a warmer for the coffee mug now.

The Series 120 differs from the more commonly seen 110 by having a somewhat bulky lamphouse "annex" attached to the rear of the spine, which, in addition to the lamp, contains a set of three filter wheels (behind the fine focus knob in photo) that give a ton of options for adding filter combinations to the light path. The 120 originally required a separate transformer/ power supply, and together with the lamphouse takes considerably more bench space than the 110. The LED conversion is totally on-board, eliminating the separate power supply.

This model is circa 1978, the year I would have graduated high school had I stuck around a little longer.

History Note: About this time the name begins to morph into Reichert.

Stereo microscopes differ from the compound microscopes by giving correct-image views (not reversed or upside-down), and offer hugely greater working distance between specimen and lenses so you can actually manipulate subjects while viewing.

There are actually two complete separate optical trains for each eye, which gives true natural stereo vision with attendant depth perception just as the eyes normally have. Very cool to play with, and insanely handy for extracting the tiniest splinters from fingers with minimal fuss -- a great item for a woodworker to own!

This one provides 10X to 25X magnification with a fluid, continuous zoom feature operated by the knob on top of the head.

You can see the the twin objectives looking down at the specimen stage on this model. Two complete microscopes working together to form one image. Great fun to use!