Enquiries into Historical Microscopy. The Microscopes of Divini, of Needham, and of the 17th and 18th Century (2015)
Andrietti, Francesco (Author)
Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza
Volume: 50
Pages: 39-112
(I). Our first step was to analyse divini’s compound microscope illustrated in 1668 in «Il Giornale de’ Letterati». this instrument has already been the focus of many studies, in particular that carried out in 1886 by Mayall, who claimed that it could be identified with, or at least was very similar to, a sliding two-lens microscope still housed in the Museo Copernicano in rome. Instead, according to the present analysis, the Museo Copernicano’s instrument does not match the characteristics described in «Il Giornale de’ Letterati», which seem more akin to another divini microscope, the “giant” one, which was presented at a meeting of the royal Society in the same year (1668), thus confirming the opinion already expressed by Harting in 1866. the second point regards the microscope used by needham in his research studies on infusions, in particular as to whether it was a simple or a compound one. after having examined the texts of needham himself and some literature regarding the problem, and with the help of some optical considerations, we have reached the conclusions that: 1) needham’s microscope was a compound one, probably of the Cuff-type, even though, in collaboration with Buffon, he also made use of a simple one; 2) the compound microscope described in the Nouvelles observations microscopiques may well represent needham’s instrument, but it is unreliable as concerns the magnifications indicated; 3) the power of magnification of needham’s microscope was very probably between -150 X and -200 X, rather than -400 X as he himself indicated. (II). the only attempt we know of controlling optical aberrations in a 17th-century compound microscope is again related to the divini microscope already considered in part I. the eye lens of this instrument consisted of two plano-convex lenses in contact, which were claimed to show a flatter visual field. In fact, it has been found that this eye lens effectively reduces field curvature. a critical examination of prep. XLvI of fabri’s Synopsis Optica was also made, and a translation of it was done. In these passages, the reasons for this lens arrangement are given, but we found that these are not acceptable in terms of modern optics. Subsequently, we focussed on three-lens microscopes of the 17th and 18th centuries, highlighting their much better control of transverse chromatic aberration. The value of coma, another optical aberration, was also examined. Comparing three-lens microscopes of the 17th and 18th centuries, one observes that, in general, the latter show lesser transverse chromatic aberration and possibly coma. However, the properties of the eighteenth-century microscopes remain very limited, even if one important result was achieved and transmitted to the nineteenth century, consisting in the definition of two optical blocks: the eyepiece, made up of two or even more lenses, and the objective lens. The distance between the eye lens and the field lens now becomes fixed, allowing a favourable situation to be maintained even in the case of variable magnification. This is now obtained by changing the objectives, rather than varying the lens separation. However, apart from the reduction of chromatism, no further important improvement was reached with regard to the other aberrations. They required different radii of curvature for the two opposite objective lens surfaces, which implies the use of a bending technique that was mastered only in the 19th century. Finally, we have provided a short discussion regarding the many theoretical studies that, starting from 1740, were devoted to optical aberrations. They remained quite neglected and did not significantly influence the effective building of microscopes until the following century.
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