A while back, I wrote an obituary for Rick Dickinson, the industrial designer behind legendary computers such as the ZX81. Reading around about this fascinating and talented character, I discovered that in the late 1980s he also designed a microscope: The Lensman. It won a range of design awards upon its release, including the Archimedes award for Engineering Excellence, a prize with such a glorious name I would probably whack it across the windshield of my Capri if it ever came my way.
I have always wanted a microscope. I have memories of them from school, and they’re tinged, as so many school memories are, with intrigue and fear. Intrigue because what could be better than this magical device which grants you access to the vivid kingdom of the very, very small? Fear because, back then I could never seem to touch anything delicate without breaking it in some tiny but consequential manner.
Microscopes! I remember looking through a microscope exactly once at school, pushing my eye into the viewfinder and seeing the leg of an insect looming, so large all of a sudden, and improbably beautiful in its design – little hairs on it and the overall cleanness of the form making it look like a Leonardo sketch, right down to the hatching. I hadn’t been back, but now the Lensman was calling to me. It was designed as a field microscope, I gather. It’s portable. That gave it a certain romance – sling it in a backpack, and then put it to work whenever there’s a discovery to be made! Maybe this also meant it could handle my clumsiness?
Source: Eurogamer I bought the microscope created by the industrial designer of the ZX81 and it was the best thing I've done in an age