“With the few test products I made according to your blueprints, I can indeed see a lot of details which are usually very difficult to discover,” she looked up, letting her slender bangs slide down from one side of her face. “I used it to look at paper, leaves and stagnant water, and found out that they look very different from their usual appearance.” Since their experience during the hot air balloon trip, when they had both been alone. Anna no longer used any titles, which also made him feel very more relaxed.
“How did you do it,” Roland exclaimed, “The sketch was only a rough outline.”
“The outline was enough,” Anna laughed. “You see, as long as the eyepiece and the objective lens are fixed at the appropriate distance, they can play the role of the amplifier. Afterward, they only needed to be fixed to an iron pipe, and with this, the microscope’s body is completed. As I was testing the magnification of the lens, I found out that the objective and observation target had to maintain a particular distance within which I could see a distinct image; whenever my hands shook the image would become blurred. From your diagram I could see that, you needed a frame to which to attach the lens to, and a platform, which could be moved up and down to get to the best distance to the object.” She paused. “But it is harder to figure out for what the bottom piece is, can you tell what it is for?”
Roland swept his eyes over the drawing and discovered that this issue was his own mistake. It was a mirror, which was used to increase the light falling onto the object, but during this era, they had yet to invent the mercury mirror. The typical aristocrat still used a bronze mirror or an iron mirror to arrange their appearance. While they had a glass frame that was covered with a thin silver layer within the Imperial Palace, to get a better reflection effect. Even without this mirror, as long as the sunlight was strong enough, the microscope could still be used.
After explaining the mirror in detail, he couldn’t help being amazed by Anna’s comprehension. Even by solely relying on a rough drawing of an outline, she had created a product which came close to the finished goods, something which would be absolutely impossible for him to have done.
Seeing that when Anna had bowed her head to examine a new lens, she was exposing her fair neck, Roland couldn’t stop from stepping forward, and wanting to kiss. But she merely placed her hand on his face and gently pushed him back, “Later, Your Royal Highness, I’m busy now. ”
“Ah… fine.”
In the end, the problem of the mirror was solved by Soraya.
According to her, she had went and fetched some mercury from the laboratory, and spread it directly on top of the glass, afterward painting a shiny coated layer on top of it. In this way she achieved a similar effect to that of a mercury mirror, but also eliminating the risk associated with mercury vapor poisoning.
Compared to a pasted silver mirror, the overall coated mirror offered much better reflection. Afterward, Roland simply set aside a number of crystal glassware, so that each witch could get a small hand mirror. The small gift, which allowed the witches to clearly see their appearance made them all very happy, even Scroll who was usually always exposing a neutral expression revealed a rare smile. Seeing all this let Roland sigh in regret, although the witches weren’t fertility, they were still women at nature.
Unfortunately, this useful commodity could temporarily not be sold to the public at a low price. After all, its base was made out of the highly priced crystal glass. Furthermore, the laboratory had also consumed a lot of crystal glass to create this colorless, transparent container.
Kyle Sichi, contrary to what one might expect, knew how to create crystal glass, but the laboratory had been burdened with other tasks so that there were seldom any empty hands. Most of the apprentices were busy with refining the two acids, soaking the cotton fire. While the chief alchemist took two or three disciplines and concentrated entirely on solving the barrier to the creation of mercury fulminate. Until the industrial acid method was thoroughly researched, they still didn’t want to make anything else for the time being.
Apart from the reflecting mirror, Roland also suggested that instead of manually moving the stage to control the distance to the object, it could also be done by turning a small knob on the side. He only needed to describe the two alternation with a few words, before Anna understood what he meant. Summoning her black flame, the new stabilizing framework was quickly constructed. Afterward, she picked the two set of lenses with the highest degree of magnification, in this way creating the very first optical microscope.
