Top left: Cat# 146 W.F., 4 element design.  top right: The later, Cat# 176 W.F., 3-element design.  Bottom: A cornucopia of eyepieces from the AO Blue Book (late 1940's)

An AO Spencer  Eyepieces Reference

Using the various available manuals and catalogs it is possible to construct a reference of Cat #'s (Catalog Numbers) and Eyepieces that may be useful in finding eyepieces for your AO Spencer microscope.   

Looking for instructions on reticles?  Look Here.

Eyepieces are quite forgiving can be used interchangeably on 160mm TL and Infinity corrected scopes with good results for instance, or often, between scopes of different makers.  A very practical, simple introduction to microscope eyepieces can be found here.  But don't miss reading the sections at the Olympus Resource Site and the Nikon's Microscopy Site.  Eyepieces designed for telescopes must meet differing needs than those for microscopes, but even so, a very interesting piece is found here.

*Note: The 'purist' in me wants to note that the very best, optimum results will be obtained by using the eyepieces specifically  made for each objective set (e.g.  a Cat# 146 10x eyepiece on a 160mm TL Series 2 scope, a Cat# 176 10X eyepiece on an infinitely corrected Series 10 scope, etc.) -- but the 'practical side' of me says it really, truly doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference -- use what you have.  But if you are wondering what the differences might be between different brands of eyepieces, Mervhob of Yahoo's Microscope Group has furnished the useful information below (also see Mikrofibel page 55) :

You can see that B&L (Bausch & Lomb) eyepiece are very close to the same specifications as AO eyepieces.  It is quite common to find B&L eyepieces on AO scopes and, probably, vice-versa.  Amazingly, you'll often find B&L objectives on AO scopes, without an shims, even though their parfocal distance is 35.6mm vs. the 34mm distance for AO Objectives.

Also, in a Yahoo Microscope forum thread , Wayne Buttermore sheds some light on the different catalog numbers for some of the eyepieces at least: 

Re: AO Eyepiece 176 and 176A, interchangeable?

"As long as the 176 and 176A are used as a pair, they are interchangeable. As pointed out, the objectives from the Series 10 and Series 110 were the same design so there are no compatibility issues. Price was not a factor at the time of the change, engineering changes dictate a new catalog number for inventory control. Wayne"

OK, Here is a list of the AO and Spencer Eyepieces 'known' to me from either experience, or from the AO Spencer Literature (i.e. a catalog or a manual).  (Note: You can select the whole list, top to bottom, and past it into Excel to create a spreadsheet that can be sorted on any column if you'd like)

Sources:

Note: A 'C' at the beginning of the Cat# means 'C'oated (1950's era).  Before this, eyepieces evidently did not have coatings, after this era, all eyepieces were coated so the 'C' was dropped.

*Unlike, in the case of objectives where I only know of one case, AO liberally reused eyepiece catalog #'s 'tromping over the top of' older eyepiece #'s  -- it seems strange to have done so, but they did.

A useful manual covering installation of eyepiece reticules, "Reichert-Jung: Inserting and Calibrating Eyepiece Reticules"  for many of the above eyepieces can be found here.

Above:  Eyepieces in 1924 (left) and 1929 (right) from the Spencer Lens Catalog of those years

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The images, articles, and concepts of this page are copyrighted by P.S. Neeley -- copyright 2005