Such was the success of his invention he was able to create lines separated by only 0.1 microns – a distance so small that microscope technology did not catch up until 1966.
Created ‘blindly’ by Nobert between 1845-1880, the content of his test slides effectively remained invisible for almost a century.
The so-called diamond rulings by Nobert are today very rare. His ground-breaking work is represented in the collection of the Royal Microscopical Society in London only by a fragment mounted in a brass plate and according to Brian Bracegirdle’s book Microscopical Mounts And Mounters “any Nobert rulings which appear on the market nowadays command very high prices indeed”.
The Nobert slide that closed on eBay last month was described on a small piece of paper inside the original custom-made leather and gilt-lined case as a 10 band slide from c.1845.
The writing on the slide itself read Test Object 1/12000 1/48000 Paris. It was being sold by Mark Langan, a 30-something scientific instruments specialist from Preston, Lancashire who told the Gazette he had spotted the rarity in a collection of microscope slides offered by Bonhams at their sale of maritime antiques at Knightsbridge on October 1. The collection (offered as one lot) had cost him around £450 but on October 13 bidding for its most exciting element rose from a $100 opening bid to sell to an American collector at $2125 (£1330).
Why a Nobert slide rules…
IN 1845, aiming to create a test that would objectively record the characteristics and power of a microscope, the Prussian scientist Friedrich Adolph Nobert (1806-1881) invented a machine capable of drawing parallel lines minute distances apart.
