Exterior Design

Where it began...

My fascination with microscopy started as a boy of around ten years of age, I remember getting my first microscope which was a small J. & L. Randall x70 “Merit Microscope”, and using it to look at onion cells. This experience has never left me and, although now more than fifty years on, I still find great delight in just taking a sample of pond water, or scraping of cheek cells from inside my mouth, and making a simple slide for observation under a microscope, applying different lighting conditions as the need arises.

At secondary school, I also vaguely remember using their one and only Baker electric microscope that was, for most of the time, kept in a glass fronted cupboard and only brought out on special occasions. Some years later, in the biology classes at St Mary’s Teacher Training College, Twickenham, we students were taught how to set up and use a microscope, as well as fix, stain and make permanent mounts of both plant and animal cells from a wide variety of sources.

As a science teacher I had been involved in teaching aspects of microscopy over many years, but it was only recently that I began to study microscopy as a serious hobby. Suffice to say, I bought my first half- decent microscope on eBay and joined the Northamptonshire Natural History Society!