Dictionary

oxyhydrogen microscope en · NOUN

Meanings

1. A 19th‑century projection microscope that used an intensely bright oxyhydrogen flame to throw greatly magnified images of microscopic specimens onto a screen for audiences.
   • Some declared it was a yard long; others were frightened, and instantly dropped it, and all were as much astonished, and made as much shouting and gesticulation, as children at a pantomime, or at a Christmas exhibition of the oxyhydrogen microscope. And all this excitement was produced by a little pocket lens, an inch and a half focus, and therefore magnifying only four or five times, but which to their unaccustomed eyes appeared to enlarge a hundred fold. 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 64:

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