Hale Instrument Co. Sheffield Est. 1974
The Hale No. 6 field microscope standing on a worn wooden bench, lit by a single hard light.

HALE

No. 6 Field microscope

The only instrument we make.

Machined in Sheffield since 1974. Six revisions in fifty-two years, and no model years. If you own one, we still stock every part of it.

Six revisions. Fifty‑two years.

  1. 1974 · No. 1

    First run, forty units. Cast base, drawn brass tube.

  2. 1981 · No. 2

    Rack‑and‑pinion coarse focus replaced the sliding tube.

  3. 1989 · No. 3

    Condenser added. The mirror stayed, because the mirror was right.

  4. 1997 · No. 4

    Objective revolver machined from one billet instead of three.

  5. 2008 · No. 5

    Fine‑focus thread re‑cut to 0.2 mm per turn.

  6. 2019 · No. 6

    Nothing. We re‑cut the base casting and stopped.

The Hale No. 6 separated into its eight components: eyepiece, objective revolver, focus adjustment, rack mount support, condenser, mirror arm, mirror base and base casting.
  1. 01Eyepiece
  2. 02Objective revolver
  3. 03Focus adjustment
  4. 04Rack mount support
  5. 05Condenser
  6. 06Mirror arm
  7. 07Mirror base
  8. 08Base casting

Eight parts. Every one of them stocked.

The oldest instrument we have refitted was built in 1976. It needed a condenser and two screws. Scroll to take this one apart.

Specification

Hale No. 6 · serial 0001 to present
Height, assembled
312 mm
Mass
4.1 kg
Tube length
160 mm
Objectives
×4 ×10 ×40
Coarse focus
rack and pinion
Fine focus
0.2 mm / turn
Stage, cast
120 × 120 mm
Base
grey iron, 2.6 kg
Finish
lacquered brass, unplated
Illumination
plane mirror, two faces

Guaranteed for as long as this company exists, and after that for as long as the parts do. We hold every component back to 1974, including the ones we stopped fitting in 1981.

One thousand two hundred people own one.

  1. 1979 · no. 0114Aberdeen

    Bought by a school. Used by roughly nine thousand children. Returned to us in 2011 for a new mirror, and for nothing else.

  2. 1994 · no. 0642Kyoto

    Bought by a lichenologist who has photographed through it every week for thirty-one years. She has never sent it back.

  3. 2021 · no. 1188Bergen

    Bought for a fourteen-year-old. It is the newest one on this page and it will outlive everyone reading it.

£2,400. One a week.

We finish one instrument every week and the list is about nine months long. When your serial number is cut you will be told which week it happened in. Nothing is taken from you until then.

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Scroll to open the instrument 01 / 06