A mysterious field microscope - the Chinese TWX-1 (I)
All of us know that the internet does in fact help enormously in order to look beyond the national fence.
A few decades ago the networking scenario was dramatically different. Thus microscopy amateurs from the
United States, Europe and other countries had a modest information exchange at best.
For example German microscopy amateurs complained that "good quality field microscopes"
apparently were unavailable. In 1981 the German Peter Hofmann (see literature) published a review
featuring the SWIFT M51 field microscope. As a conclusion he stated [translation by us] :
"It is surprising that such an ingenious instrument has not been available before".
Remember that this was in the before-web-era. It was terribly difficult at this time to screen the
world's market for special products like those field microscopes. So many ingenious products
simply remained hidden behind national and cultural borderlines.
In 1997 the reknowned biology veteran Bill Amos reveiled the existence of the
"Nikon Model H" field microsope
to the world audience. In his MICSCAPE web article he made clear that this fine Japanese field microscope
had been available for a few cosmopolitan people since about 1960.
Besides, German post-war microscopists were surprised to learn about the same time that the German Hensoldt company
had produced pre-war luxury field microscopes as well.
About the year 2000 international microscope collectors communicated intensively via internet.
Michael Dingley from Australia offered a CD dedicated to portable microscopes only, listing many field microscopes
and illustrating them with photographs. In this stage of advanced international transparency
everybody thought that the history of field microscopes was closed - nothing to add.
Casual reappearences of instrument designs like the "Lensman" under the labels of
"Trekker" or "Readiview", plus a few MacArthur or SWIFT microscope re-makes were notified
by the now much more international microscopists' community, but without great surprise.
Nevertheless one of those collectors, Manuel del Cerro, opened the door to a strange miracle by stating
in his collection CD:
"Surprisingly, in the late 1980s, when the Chinese microscope-making industry was not
fully developed it was already producing a very elaborate McArthur microscope."
But alas there are no illustrations on this CD, just the text hint. Today we know that Manuel
del Cerro referred to the instrument depicted below which we will discuss in
detail in the issues to come:
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