The Microscope

by Andrew Ross

While these practical investigations were in progress, the subject of achromatism engaged the attention of some of the most profound mathematicians in England. Sir John Herschel, Professor Airy, Professor Barlow, Mr. Coddington, and others, contributed largely to the theoretical examination of the subject; and though the results of their labors were not immediately applicable to the microscope, they essentially promoted its improvement.

For some time prior to 1829 the subject had occupied the mind of a gentleman, who, not entirely practical, like the first, nor purely mathematical, like the last-mentioned class of inquirers, was led to the discovery of certain properties in achromatic combinations which had been before unobserved. These were afterwards experimentally verified; and in the year 1829 a paper on the subject, by the discoverer, Mr. Joseph Jackson Lister, was read and published by the Royal Society. The principles and results thus obtained enabled Mr. Lister to form a combination of lenses which transmitted a pencil of fifty degrees, with a large field correct in every part; as this paper was the foundation of the recent improvements in achromatic microscopes, and as its results are indispensable to all who would make or understand the instrument, we shall give the more important parts of it in detail, and in Mr. Lister’s own words.

“I would premise that the plano-concave form for the correcting flint lens has in that quality a strong recommendation, particularly as it obviates the danger of error which otherwise exists in centering the two curves, and thereby admits of correct workmanship for a shorter focus. To cement together also the two surfaces of the glass diminishes by very nearly half the loss of light from reflection, which is considerable at the numerous surfaces of a combination. I have thought the clearness of the field and brightness of the picture evidently increased by doing this; it prevents any dewiness or vegetation from forming on the inner surfaces; and I see no disadvantage to be anticipated from it if they are of identical curves, and pressed closely together, and the cementing medium permanently homogeneous.

“These two conditions then, that the flint lens shall be plano-concave, and that it shall be joined by some cement to the convex, seem desirable to be taken as a basis for the microscopic object-glass, provided they can be reconciled with the destruction of the spherical and chromatic aberrations of a large pencil.

“Now in every such glass that has been tried by me which has had its correcting lens of either Swiss or English glass, with a double convex of plate, and has been made achromatic by the form given to the outer curve of the convex, the proportion has been such between the refractive and dispersive powers of its lenses, that its figure has been correct for rays issuing from some point in its axis not far from its principal focus on its plane side, and either tending to a conjugate focus within the tube of a microscope, or emerging nearly parallel.

“Let A B (Fig. 13) be supposed such an object-glass, and let it be roughly considered as a plano-convex lens, with a curve A C B running through it, at which the spherical and chromatic errors are corrected which are generated at the two outer surfaces; and let the glass be thus free from aberration for rays F D E G issuing from the radiant point F, H E being a perpendicular to the convex surface, and I D to the plane one. Under these circumstances, the angle of emergence G E H much exceeds that of incidence F D I, being probably nearly three times as great.

“If the radiant is now made to approach the glass, so that the course of the ray F D E G shall be more divergent from the axis, as the angles of incidence and emergence become more nearly equal to each other, the spherical aberration produced by the two will be found to bear a less proportion to the opposing error of the single correcting curve A C B; for such a focus therefore the rays will be over-corrected.

Fig. 13.

“But if F still approaches the glass, the angle of incidence continues to increase with the increasing divergence of the ray, till it will exceed that of emergence, which has in the meanwhile been diminishing, and at length the spherical error produced by them will recover its original proportion to the opposite error of the curve of correction. When F has reached this point F´´ (at which the angle of incidence does not exceed that of emergence so much as it had at first come short of it), the rays again pass the glass free from spherical aberration.