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American Optical Series H20

This microscope was made in mid-1970s, but it is still in a great shape and delivers very nice pictures. You can find a manual for the AO-20 here. Steve Neeley has collected a vast amount of information about American Optical and Spencer microscopes on his excellent website.

I sold the AO-20 microscope in 2004.

This microscope is equipped as follows:
  • objectives (all infinity corrected) mounted in a quadruple nosepiece:

    • 4x plan achromatic objective, N.A. 0.12
    • 10x achromatic objective, N.A. 0.25
    • 45x achromatic objective, N.A. 0.66
    • 50x oil immersion plan achromatic objective, N.A. 0.80
    • 100x oil immersion achromatic objective, N.A. 1.25

    • 10x dark contrast phase achromatic objective, N.A. 0.25
    • 20x dark contrast phase plan achromatic objective, N.A. 0.50
    • 45x dark contrast phase achromatic objective, N.A. 0.66


  • dual binocular body with 10x wide field eyepieces and green arrow pointer

  • 12V 100W halogen light source with centerable field diaphragm and condenser focusing controls

  • Abbe condenser N.A. 1.25 with aperture diaphragm, on focusable rack and pinion mount

  • aplanatic-achromatic turret phase condenser N.A. 0.90 with four phase annuli

  • darkfield bispheric condenser

  • rotatable polarizer attachment and analyzer unit with 3-position turret

  • two built-in 5-position filter turrets

  • graduated mechanical stage

  • coarse and fine focusing knobs with "auto focus" feature

  • ExpoStar automatic camera controller with shutter attachment, 35 mm film back, and 3 1/4"  x  4 1/4" Polaroid back

  • 10x field of view focusing eyepiece

  • filar micrometer

  • epi-fluorescence attachment with three excitation filters, three dichroic mirrors and three barrier filters

  • viewing screen

AO-20 Microscope

  droplet • Microscopy of the Protozoa Copyright © 2003-2008  
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