The Purbeck Exhibition of the QMC and PMS. May 2001

This year’s Spring Exhibition was accompanied by very favourable seasonable weather and as a result of this, we enjoyed a good number of visitors.

Derek Stevens who organised the meeting this year, had images of colourful fresh water algae(Live - from a canal in Shropshire) on more or less continuous video display. This facilitated viewing by groups of people and was particularly popular with the local school children who had been invited. [Ed - I feel Derek deserves special mention for his efforts to bring microscopy to the local school children. Hopefully these will join the club in due course and bring about a much needed reduction in the average age of the membership!]

Savvas Christofi demonstrated a superb collection of insects embedded in Amber and also displayed a splendid Victorian bouquet of flowers in diatoms and butterfly scales. [Ed - Savvas told me that most of the amber was 40 to 50 million years old.]

Klause Kemp equipped with a very modern MDS camera and laptop showed his latest incredible product. It was the profile of a sailing boat constructed in diatoms and spicules illuminated in dark ground.

Richard Speight showed a home made sub stage condenser made from polished Perspex in the manner of Shadbolt which gave a very evenly lit dark field from a quite small light source.

Mr G.D. Griffin brought a Vickers Patholux instrument which he had adapted in many ways to demonstrate some strewn diatoms. The simple one lever engagement of an analyser filter was particularly inspired.

Tony Saunders-Davies demonstrated some ingenious compressaria which were so constructed that the cavity was evenly reduced by control screws at either end of the slide. [Ed - the top example is very largely based on the gravity compressor developed by the late L V Martin. The lower one is, as far as I know, my own original design. I hope to describe it in more detail in a later edition.]

Fred Loxton and Charlotte Wheatley showed a variety of photomicrographs by Didonato, as well as some older slides which included some beautifully preserved insect eggs from the Victorian period. Ken and Bette Jones gave a continuous display of video footage of underwater May- fly larvae as well as demonstrating the Mantis FX microscope and its stunning stereo effects. They also offered for sale various optical paraphernalia like prisms and lenses.

Mike and Joan Bingley had a comprehensive range of artificial and natural fabrics both dry mounted as well as in resin mountants in order to illustrate their properties. Joan here is explaining some of the finer points to a couple of visitors.

. William Vatcher set up a variety of illuminating systems running from small self - contained batteries using generally available materials. Brian Darnton brought a small binocular Wessex and a box of slides of museum objects, dry mounted from the seas of Europe [Ed. He also showed some of his beautiful mounts of forams. During a Mediterranean visit I was able to identify several species with the aid of one of his type slides]. Refreshments were again provided my Rosemary Stevens and Margriet Darnton during the course of the day. Several potential newcomers introduced themselves during the proceedings.These included 8 adult visitors and about 12 children from the local school.

Brian Darnton. May 2001 .