A SUPER-MICROSCOPE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19980, 23 December 1926, Page 5

A SUPER-MICROSCOPE.

WONDERS OE A NEW INSTRUMENT. LIVING MICROBES.. , (Fbou Ode Own Coebebeondekt.) LONDON, November 4. A new super-microscope, which will enable man to see further into the hidden secrets of the world, was foreshadowed bp? Mr J. E. Barnard in a lecture at King's College. Work is going on his laboratory with a view to visualising infinitesimally small objects by new forms of radiation not transmitted by air. Up to a year ago the microscopist’s usual method of seeing bacteria was to look at his object by means of light transmitted through either air or water, or, with high powers, through, cedar wood oil. Then, Mr Barnard, working with Dr Gye on cancer research, made history by the production of a microscope illuminated by a mercury vapour lamp, through the quartz lenses of which objects were photographed in ultra-violet light. With this instrument Mr Barnard has been able to magnify an object 12,000,000 times, but he is now searching for a means to increase this magnifying power by the use of radiation from other parts of the spectrum. In the instrument which he showed, and which, he pointed out, could be worked only by a specialist, the fine adjustment could make a division equal to one-ten-thousandtb part of a millimetre. DUST AS A BARRIER. “This is fine,” he said, ‘‘but not too fine. We have now got to that stage when the tiniest particle of dust in the apparatus is a very serious matter. There is no doubt that we shall go further, and it has been found that in certain respects the use of radiations still shorter than those already used by the latest microscope would bo simpler.” They were not yet in a position to say bow long the latest apparatus involved would maintain its accuracy, but they had been able to focus an object, take it away for a time, and replace it in such an exact position that there was no necessity for refocussing. A microbe in the new apparatus was so large that one could describe it only in planes.” For example, if one took a bacillus it could be photographed at least 10 times in different thickness, and there was a difference in the photograph in structure each time. LIVING MICROBES. This meant that, with the supor-micro-scope, one had to confine attention to secondary structure of bacteria. Another point was that every photograph taken was of living bacteria. All their material was living, not dead and stained. “We make such an effort to ensure that the objects we are going to examine are alive,” he said, “that we cultivate them on the microscope slide itself, and wait until growth has taken place.”