Choosing and buying a microscope by Dave Walker. An excellent discussion on buying your first microscope.

Absolute Clarity a commercial site that has a very good discussion on the quality of used stereo microscopes gained from practical experience from repairing them.

Paul James on eyepieces and achromat objectives.

Testing the performance of a microscope with diatoms by Dave Walker.

NIH's latest image processing software ImageJ. A Java implementation of  NIH Image and Sicon Image that is public domain and runs on Mac's, Windows and Linux. It is a full featured open source image processing system with strong user support for user written plugins. It is a giant step forward from the old version and being open source and user extendable it has nowhere to go but up.  It is more complex than Photo Shop or Paint Shop Pro but it is more powerful and the price is right.

L. Bullayya , Director of Public Instruction, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. Publishes a Science Teachers Handbook for third world countries. We can all learn something here. It has methods for using improvised apparatus as basic as making a blackboard from scratch.

CATO Institute's Biotechnology Information Directory - The WWW Virtual Library. An institute that promotes biotechnology and has extensive links to biotech information. Regardless how you feel about this controversial subject the information here is useful.

Pubmed search engine covering a wide range of medical topics from the National Library of Medicine.

Smith College's histologylab manual with many interesting links.

Methods in plant histology. A good list of methods and recipes for work with plants. It is one of several books that have fallen into public domain. I found it as a link from Pagewise a wide ranging link site with a good deal of  interesting information and annoying pop up windows.

Dartmouth College's Chemlab web page. It has basic lab procedures and some experiments.

Kenneth Todar's Bacteriology 330 Lecture Topics Main Page from Bacteriology 330 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Recipes from the University of Queensland. Click on Proceed if the staff page shows up.

The Stains File  copyrighted by Bryan Llewellyn.

USDA's manual for collecting and preserving insects and mites. It loads slowly but it's worth it.

Prof. Rupert Lenzenweger & Günter H. Stanjek's page in German on desmids identification. I can't manage the text very well but the illustrations and the names work in any language as do the lovely illustrations.

Klaus Kemp's page of diatom slides, test slides and exhibition mounts.

Larry D. Boyd has a stock of microscope stains and is building a stock of microscope supplies by the day. He has yet to put up a web page but he can send you a list if you email him at larboyd@sprynet.com. The stains that contain flammable fluid will be shipped dry and the buyer will be responsible for getting the acetone or alcohol locally. It saves a very great deal of shipping. He is located in the USA.

Richard Chiasson is a retired microscope technician and buying and selling microscopes. He does not have a web page up yet. Contact rchias5159@aol.com Tel: 508.966.0346 - Fax: 508.966.5157 - Cell: 781.760.0942 - Bellingham, MA. Dick ships worldwide.

Sid Lipkowitz  email sid.lipkowitz@sympatico.ca.  Sid is a Zeiss collector and microscope dealer that ships world wide.

Martin Microscope sell new & used microscopes and Coolpix adapters.

I Miller Microscopes has new and used scopes.

Benz Microscope Optics Center offers new & use microscopes.

McCrone Microscopes & Accessories  world leader in particle, fiber, dust and environment work. They publish many standard books, power and fiber slides.

Poly Scientific has chemical, stains and regents for histology and cytology.

MVIA a commercial page that sells Image processing software and Coolpix camera adapter

An inexpensive source of Canada Balsam .
 

Microscope Function and Construction

Rice University does one of the best pages I have found that explains the basics of compound microscopes. For newcomers this is the place to start.

Ron Neumeyer's Light Microscopy Forum is required reading for the amateur. It has an excellent explanation of the microscope, great pictures and a great collection of links.

An excellent resource on how microscopes work with Java tutorials by Olympus. It covers a broad range of subjects that relate to microscopy and optics.

Southern Microscope Service's Home Page.  It covers all parts of the microscope and lighting. It has a few broken links.

From the Antique Telescope Society selected ATS Journal articles useful for restoring, cleaning maintaining telescopes, books, etc. It is very informative about cleaning optics.

Dr. Steve Wolniak's course on the subject, Principles of Light Microscopy at the University of Maryland. It covers the basics of using a microscope and most types of light microscopes. It also covers Culturing Protists, Sources of Protozoa, Procedural Methods for establishing cultures, A simplified antibiotic treatment for obtaining axenic cultures of marine phytoplankton, From the Wild to the Lab: Isolation and Cultivation of Marine and Fresh Water Ciliates. It also has directions for stains and cultures for saltwater plankton.

Molecular Expressions web site has a number of  java tutorials, an excellent picture gallery, a microscope museum and link to NikonU which provides an overview of many aspects of microscopes.

A history of Wild Heerbugg.

Leica's web page .

Nikon's Microscope University covering a wide range of subjects of interest on all types of light microscopes and a stunning picture gallery.
 

Stephen M. Powell's collection of links of how to's for connecting cameras to microscopes and other things. If you are interested in photography this is a must read. If you are interested in electronics his page will be of interest. It has annoying pop up windows.

C. R Nave's Hyper Physics site to the Physics of light . It gets into real deep stuff. Georgia State University.
 
 

The Histotech's Home Page. This page was created by Steven Slap and Peggy Wenk for their "Introduction to the Internet for Histotechs" workshops at the 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 NSH national meetings. It has been designed to be used by Histotechs as a "portal" and the start-up page in their browser, and contains links to other sites of interest.

Histonet's Search  engineand links for histology. Sometimes gives a 404 error.

This histology page by Barry Gormley and Roy C. Ellis of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woodville, South Australia is a gold mine of information on technique in histology. It has extensive information about microtome knife sharpening, stains and staining, and an excellent section on microscope theory. This is a very useful site for anyone interested in histology or microtomes.

This is Herman Meekes' collection of information gleaned from the Microscopy and Confocal list servers as well as from independent contributions. Much of the information is beyond the amateur’s scope but much of it is very useful to the amateur.

Veterinary, Industry, & Research Committee page that has many links on a wide range of subjects.

The University of  North Carolina Pathology Department .
 

Formula for long term storage of specimens to retain color from Histonet's Search engine .

ASHI Home Inspections A site on sick building syndrome this is their page of slide mountants including glycerin jelly and how to make it.

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology  (Alternative site) has some interesting things on algae and the main thing that interests me is the media recipes from the CCAO Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa.

A collection of discussions on mounting media from the Archives of Acarology List.

Recipes from the Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah. It has very good directions for making fixatives stains and such and has safety precautions.

Kansas State's histology page with a world of images of tissue by Milton Wolf & Mark Scarbrough on their Histo Web page.

Histology Atlas Database of labeled tissue images hosted by Deltagen.

University of Arizona's Experimental Pathology Core: Microscopy & Imaging Resources Histology page. They have a good collection of links on technique and procedures by Douglas W. Cromey, M.S.

University of Iowa's Virtual Hospital; an online book the Atlas of Microscopic Anatomy
by Ronald A. Bergman, Ph.D., Adel K. Afifi, M.D., Paul M. Heidger, Jr., Ph.D.

Histology Glossary produced by Thomas George, MD & Fawad Ahmed
at the University of Florida in the Histology Tutorial  by Thomas George, MD & Wojciech Pawlina, MD .
 

Hotel Intestine is a site on parasites that has a great deal on protocol from collecting to mounting and some identification keys. Built by Dr. R. E. Clopton at Peru State College, Nebraska

An online invertebrate course with a wealth of information  on invertebrates, recipes, procedures and sources.
Hosted at Lander University by Richard S. Fox

Miscape's Pond life identification page .

Prof. Rupert Lenzenweger & Günter H. Stanjek's page in German on desmids identification. I can't manage the text very well but the illustrations and the names work in any language as do the lovely illustrations.

Brian Ford's page on building van Leeuwenhoek's microscope and single lens microscopes in general.

Giorgio Carboni shows how to build a single lens microscope based on the Leeuwenhoek microscope using modern materials.
 
 

Micscapeis the premier online microscopy enthusiasts magazine and one of the best online publishing efforts on the Net.

Beyondis Marly Cain-Fryman’s innovative science magazine. She presents science with a very fresh look that is interesting and doable by the sub teen or the octogenarian. Marly also publishes Beyond for Kids . This is the one of the best applications of education on the Internet I have seen. She also run a mailing list for kids and teaches science in west Texas. Doing all that with a husband and 3 year old at home makes me wish I was young again.
 

Unless otherwise noted I have no business relation to any commercial links listed here. I have done business with some of the business listed and I will be glad to relate my experience with them to anyone that contacts me. Gordon Couger  gcouger@couger.com
 

Aim-Cois a commercial site of a very interesting company that makes extremely accurate microscope stages that are accurate to one micron over 6 inches and repeatable to 0.01 micron. They are often a source of used inspection microscopes and a certified Leica repair shop. They have an extensive collection of Leitz parts.

Equipment resurrection. A source of useful scientific equipment and usually has some higher end microscopes.

Absolute Clarity a commercial site that has a very good discussion on the quality of used stereo microscopes gained from practical experience from repairing them.

This is Charles W. Scouten'sMyNeurolab a commercial page of histology equipment and the beginnings of an online forum on histology.

Kitchen Culture Kits Products is a commercial site on tissue culture for the amateur. It has a lot of information on how to grow cultures with minimal equipment such as using a microwave oven to sterilize media and sources for odd stuff that some may find useful.

Microscope vendors data base. Mostly professional sources but some interesting links. Maintained by Henrik Kaker who writes software and does microanalysis in Ravne, Slovenia.

Brunel Microscopes Ltd. They have a wide supply of  microscopes and related materials. They are located in the UK but ship worldwide and are very friendly to amateurs.

Southern Scientific will sell some cultures, media and such to amateurs. They have a good selection of science supplies.

Warren Diamond abrasives for any of you that are really trying to get your microtome knifes sharp.

Windtradera US source for home school science supplies. They have some microscope supplies.

NESCOOn Line Catalog source of veterinary supplies, educational materials and many other things. This pH meter is what led me to it.
 

Send comments and additional links to Gordon Couger gcouger@couger.com.