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The Purbeck Meeting of the QMC and Postal Microscopy Society.
April the 28th at Langton Matravers. Dorset
(See bottom of page for some photographs of the meeting)

The meeting was organised by Derek Stevens and was very well attended following yet another plug by South today and the usual adverts at information offices, museums and libraries. In addition a Microscope Primer Day at the local Museum on the 27th of April certainly produced. A crop of younger people at the actual Purbeck meeting.

Dick Speight had assembled a range of Vertical illumination attachments from Beck along with a Beck 47 instrument. Some were connected with the original bulbs but one was fitted by Dick with a modern bulb and had an impressive home made aluminium shield and cooling fin.

Klaus Kemp, brought in the complete set of printed Moller plates including that most famous one, sold to van Heurk. Klaus’s own splendid version of Moller work was also available for viewing.
Klaus also brought the sad news of the recent passing of Bernard Hartley the world famous Diatomist and some boxes of Bernard’s effects which were to be given to members with the option of donations to the nursing home. Klaus had visited Bernard regularly during his long infirmity.

Fred Loxdon, displayed a really delightful set of palaeobotany slides cut and ground from coal balls from Lancashire and produced for Flatters and Garnet , Manchester some time ago.
Brian Darnton brought a series of Petri dishes with sand from around the world as well as his latest dry mounts of Foraminifera.

Joan Bingley displayed the beautiful Ricciocarpus natans or fringed heartwort together with an illustrated commentary from the website of the British Bryological Society.

Derek Stevens once again entertained young and old with his live TV pictures of his algae and creatures from the ever popular birdbath.

Peter Weedon.set up a system for the cleaning and examination of material from a mole hill . eventually silicacious fragments were subjected to examination under a polariscope to brilliant effect. Such an effort as this, is the essence of amateur microscopy.

Pam Hamer. Three small field microcopes costing less than £20 in total were displayed. Samples were provided to show the performance of each. When Pam tested one with a magnification ofX50 and a field view of 3mm it was very successful on a lichen and could even be used with a digital camera. One of the other microscopes, a converted 8X20 monocular, although rather unstable, proved to be a handy dual purpose instrument that was easy to use.

W Vatcher. As usual brought in several home made gadgets which included a ringing table\made from a computer hard drive with a magnetic clip, and a full range of coloured disks for Rheinberg filters.

G D Griffin Brought in a very upmarket Chinese inverted microscope with excellent characteristics and performance
Sam Christofi, Displayed a dry mounted Diatom slide of frustules in situ by the well known French mounter Tempere but illuminated with an unusual very low level oblique light source.

Mike Woof brought in his home made carousel stage fitted to his Beck but this time with micromount minerals.

Alan Jefferis a newcomer to our meetings, brought in a fabulous brass Keyzore and Bendon bought at 50 High Holborn London, many years ago by his grandfather. He also exhibited some excellent contempory slides.
Alan also produced an excellent polar dependent toy for grandchildren. An inclined mirror, projected light forwards through two large polar filters at right angles to one another, but in between a slide could be dropped in which was of various scenes constructed of cellotape of different thicknesses to create the colours. There was also a third rotating filter behind the slide that created phase shift effects. It was actually a very good toy that demonstrated the full potential of polarised light use.
(Click here to go to "Fun with the Microscope for more details)