Professor Abbe constructed an apochromatic immersion objective especially for the English optical tube-length of 10·6 inches (= to 270 m.m.), and mechanical tube-length somewhat less in measurement. This may be taken to mean a slight increase in the standard value of the tube, and therefore the addition of the rack-and-pinion to the draw-tube, now generally made a part of the microscope, is certainly of some practical value. This difference, however, when working with the English body-tube of 10 inches, may be discarded; it is, in fact, only where the shorter Continental body is in use, that so small a difference of tube-length exercises a disturbing effect over adjustment. Moreover, an object placed on the stage of the shorter body microscope will not be seen with the same distinctness by the draughtsman should he wish to make use of the camera lucida.
The optical tube-length of the body is measured from the back lens of the objective to the front lens or principal focus of the eye-piece; the mechanical tube-length from the end of nose-piece of objective to the top lens of the eye-piece.
The Hartnach Students’ Model Microscope.
CHAPTER III.
Applied Optics:—Eye-pieces; Achromatic Objectives; Condensers.
It is almost unnecessary to say that the eye-piece forms a most important part of applied optics in the microscope. It is an optical combination designed to bring the pencil of rays from the objective to assist in the formation of a real or virtual image before it arrives at the eye of the observer. Greater attention has been given of late years to the improvement of the eye-piece, since flatness of field much depends upon it. Opticians have therefore sought to make it both achromatic and compensatory.
There are several forms of eye-pieces in use, some of which partake of a special character, and these will receive attention in their proper places. It is, however, customary among English opticians to denote the value of their several eye-pieces by Roman capitals, A, B, C, D, and E. Continental opticians, on the other hand, have a preference for numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, or more, and by which they are recognised.
The eye-piece in more general use is that known as the Huyghenian ([Fig. 99]); this came into use upwards of two centuries ago. It was constructed by Christian Huyghens, a Dutch philosopher and eminent man of science, secretary to William III.
It was made for the eye-piece of a telescope he constructed with his own hands, and it has been in constant use as the eye-piece of the microscope for nearly two centuries. It consists of two plano-convex lenses, with their plane surfaces turned towards the eye, and divided at a distance equal to half the sum of their focal lengths—in other words, at half the sum of the focal length of the eye-glass and of the distance from the field-glass at which an image from the object glass would be formed, a stop, or diaphragm, being placed between the two lenses for the reason about to be explained. Huyghens himself appears to have been quite unaware of the value of an eye-piece so cleverly constructed.