My First Microscope Russ Hanson
When I was about 12 years old, I asked my parents for my own
microscope for either Christmas or my Birthday (December 10th). We shopped for Christmas presents from the
two big home catalogs – Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Wards. I had decided to be a scientist by that time
and I knew I needed a microscope,
telescope, chemistry set and some science books to read.
I picked out a $12 microscope that looked like what I could
use and was in the price range I thought was right for a present. I worked on the farm, but it wasn’t until next
year that I could work for my neighbor, Raymond Noyes and earn money on my
own. All of the money we earned picking
cucumbers for the pickle factory was saved ($80 a summer) for school
clothes.
In 1958, Dad worked
out at $1 per hour as a carpenter when he had time while still farming
fulltime, so $12 was what he earned for 12 hours of work – a great deal of
money for the whole family.
Mom and Dad felt that gifts for us that were educational
were worth paying more for than toys. As
I wanted this badly, I negotiated with them and said I would accept it as both
my birthday and Christmas gift for 1958.
I got it on my birthday. I did get a few smaller gifts for Christmas,
but the microscope was the main gift.
It took a while to learn how to use the microscope and I
found that most things were best seen at the lowest power. The longer eyepiece and the shortest rotating
stage gave 60x (60 times magnification).
Higher powers were hard to focus and difficult to get the light right
and dirt on the lenses showed up more.
Things that were
mostly transparent worked with the little round mirror under the stage (flat
part) adjusted to focus light up through the hole, through the specimen on the
glass slide and into the eyepiece.
Changing the mirror angle gave more or less light and made different
views.
If it was opaque (opposite of transparent) then I needed
some light shining from the top side on the specimen. An old goose-neck bendable reading lamp
worked OK for this. Later I bought a
small flexible desk lamp just for using the microscope.
The first things I looked at were things around the
house. Flies, cloth, thread, food, and
whatever looked interesting. I wanted to
look at pond water but that was harder until I got the coverslips – tiny flat
thin sheets of glass. Using an
eyedropper (from an old Vicks medicine bottle) I put a drop of water from the
swamp on the slide and looked. It was
messy and I got the bottom of the lens wet and dirty when I wasn’t careful and
moved it too low. It was is bothersome
to clean them (all of them come apart by unscrewing them and can be cleaned
with a cue-tip and alcohol).
When I got the coverslips, I could put the drop down, gently
put the coverslip over it and then look at the thin layer of trapped water
between glass and slip. I got a book from
the school library and identified all sorts of little animals—big rotifers,
amoebas, tiny odd looking things, euglena (half plant-half animal) and mosses
algae and more—often swimming around in the tiny flattened drop. Nowadays a
student can ask the school biology teacher to borrow a couple of glass slides
and cover slips, but I was in grade school at Cushing and they didn’t have a
microscope at all, and science was mostly from books.
I spent hours looking
at the life in an eyedropper drop of swamp water, of Wolf Creek water from
Grandpa’s farm (Marvin’s now) and of course I looked at dirt, at sand, at
plants, at blood, and everything I could find.
Eventually when I got into high school, the
biology lab had a few microscopes that were much better and bigger and I could
see more, but I always liked my own first microscope, and so kept it all my
life to bring it out once in a while to look at something.
It is an Adams 60x to 600x although the higher powers don’t
work very good – and the lens are now somewhat dirty, I could use them if I was
careful. Having a microscope taught me
to be careful, gentle, and scrupulously clean, and that is why my microscope
still works.
When a lens is dirty, you can tell that by turning the
eyepiece and seeing the dirt move on that set of lenses, or turning out It could be cleaned up more, but it takes
patience, care and is hard to get it really clean.
The microscope was made in Japan, has brand name Adams 60x – 600x and came from either Sears or
Wards.
My Uncle Lloyd Hanson got me
started in electronics as the branch of science I decided to specialize in. He told us about a “crystal radio” that he
had in his barracks during World War II in California where he was stationed.
He brought it out and said it ran without batteries and needed a long
wire aerial and a ground, and could pick up local radio stations during the day
and more at night. He said during the
war, they weren’t supposed to have a radio in the barracks as it would bother
other people, so he used this one – a wooden box about 6x6x6 with some knobs
and dials and a place to hook an earphone and the aerial and ground.
He loaned it to me to try out
and although I never got it going, decided to get a Crystal Radio for $4 from
Sears for another birthday and that one did work. I built it myself. We didn’t have any good books on this in any
libraries around and we didn’t get to them anyway, so I wrote to the Wisconsin
Free Traveling Library in Madison for books on crystal radios, and they sent me
one, and later another to read for a month.
The library was for folks in rural areas who couldn’t otherwise get
books on subjects they wanted. No internet in those days!
By the time I was 16, I built
my 6 inch reflector telescope, had bought several electronics kits, got a
chemistry set for Christmas and was already taking all the science classes in
High School and planning to go to college in physics, math and chemistry. I managed to get a major in physics and math,
later a minor in chemistry and another minor in computer science and took night
classes most of my working life to learn more about electronics and
computers. However, my main job for 25
years was in medicine and biology where I was useful to the biologists because
I knew about much of the science and math they didn’t study.
(I plan to give the microscope away to a budding scientist and this is for that person)
I hope you have as much enjoyment out of looking at the
microscopic world under your first microscope as I did. When I got older – much older, I bought a
used better microscope that I still have.
I could see things better, but never really enjoyed it nearly as much as
this one. It is now 60 years old and,
other than needing some cleaning, in just about as good a shape as when I got
it.
