THE PURBECK MAY 2004 MEETING

Ed: Grateful thanks to Brian Darnton for this excellent, well-illustrated report.

The Quekett Microscopical Club and the Postal Microscopical Society `s May meeting was held at Langton Matravers Purbeck on the 15th of May 2004.

The wonderful weather brought out both a good attendance of exhibitors and visitors and lots of cheerful enthusiasm.

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 Sam Christofi brought along a very large inverted Nikon Microscope which had been used for multiple tissue culture examination. It was set up to observe several petrie dishes of fresh water creatures with a huge diversity.

Fred Loxten and Charlotte Wheatley had among other items a stunning, entertaining and rather incredible demonstration of the resurrection of water creatures from the dried sediment of a stone bath. It had been air dried and stored for over 2 years in a jar. It looked quite dead, but the addition of a few drops of water created an instant jungle of creatures, foremost of which was the acrobatic, tumbling, water bears punctuated with lots of high speed anamicules!!

Mike Woof from the Reading contingent had set up a microscope that was capable of being used to observe the different effects of looking at the mounted internal contents of insects through the chitinous wall. In Infra red light, the opacity of the chitin cleared to reveal much more of the internal tissues.

 

Graham Griffin. Again showed his ingenuity in demonstrating a modification of an inverted microscope. He had used the X-Y stage movement to create a very effective bristle micro-manipulator for the handling of Diatoms and suchlike creatures.

Dick Speight. Showed his newly acquired Beck M47 with a superb vertical illuminator. The Lamp housing that had been missing, had been replaced by a very fine version turned on his lathe from solid aluminium. He is shown demonstrating it to

Kit Brownlee , who had a rather nice Russian polarising microscope and demonstrated a number of slides all of which showed a compelling hue of colours.

Peter Weedon. Is a new member of QMC. He brought a newly acquired Beck standard 47 microscope for use in his new hobby in the hope that members might help him correct the obvious fault in the centralisation of his sub stage optics and help him clean the lenses of this older instrument. I understand that he was given more than enough imaginative ideas and several members were allowed to wield a screwdriver to improve things during the day.

Klaus Kemp. Brought along a large variety of his splendid workmanship not only in the field of Diatoms (see our opening page image) but also in Radiolaria, Foraminifera and art of Butterfly scale laying. There was also copy of his more recent work on named digital images of diatoms of the world for the professional and the amateur .

William Vatcher took over the stage of the hall to lay out his recent acquisitions and more importantly his adaptations and inventions in the important field of illumination.

Christina Brody (on the right) a Botanical and Natural History artist laid out a table of her work in the field of Radiolaria, Foraminifera and Diatoms . Although the work was executed in 2 dimensions on black scraper board, the effect was certainly 3 dimensional. There was universal acclaim for this unbelievably painstaking artistry and the high degree of observation applied to achieve the magnificent results. Her work is already well known around the world from her splendid articles on the UK Micscape Microscope magazine. This was yet another excellent example of art from Microscopy.

Joan Bingley (left) presented a well prepared exhibition of a feather that had been mounted in glycerol for observation and drawing for the purpose of transferring the design onto paper using a Camera Lucida.

Derek Stevens (centre) - a long time stalwart of the Purbeck meeting, was able to be released from hospital for the meeting. Best wishes, Derek!

Brian Darnton. Gave a display of around 20 mounted slides and the peripheral books and literature from many Marine expeditions such as HMS Challenger, Terra Nova, HMS Discovery,HMS Porcupine, Lord Bandon, the German Meteor and Glomar Challenger. He entitled it "A Glimpse of the Silent Landscape" in honour of a new book which alas had suffered a publication or supply delay and was not available for the exhibition. It is called "The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger" by Richard Corfield, an Oxford Geologist and Academic. Some rare Illustrations of dredging were kindly provided by the staff of the Royal Irish Academy Dublin of the Lord Bandon (syn. Flying Falcon)

Derek Stevens who organised the meeting this year was actually in residence in Southampton Hospital undergoing long term treatment. We were delighted that he was given special leave to visit us during the course of the day together with his wife Rosemary. The catering was taken care of, by volunteers, who rallied willingly to the cause.


Ed: We offer our thanks Derek for organising the meeting, and very best wishes for a speedy recovery.