Patents connected with the Microscope . Bp W. II. Brown. 265 
In 1780 Storer obtained another patent* for his “new Invention 
and discoverys of 4 Certain Properties in Light and in Optical Glasses, 
and by means [of a New and Peculiar Application Invented certain 
Telescopes, Microscopes, Opera Glasses, and other Optical Instruments, 
which are thereby rendered More Accurate, More Distinct, and More 
Luminous ; and, in particular, whereby a Refracting Telescope of 
Fifteen Inches Long has all the Powers of a Two-Foot Reflector, with 
the Additional Advantages of a Larger Field, More Light and Distinct- 
ness of Vision, and may be easier adapted to the Size of the Object 
and State of the Atmosphere, and by which said Invention one and 
the same Portable Refracting Telescope may be made to Answer the 
Purpose, and have all the Powers of Telescopes of various Lengths 
and Sizes now in Use, and which New-invented Telescopes are 
admirably adapted to the Purposes of Navigation and of Terestial and 
Astronomical Observations.’ ” 
I have read Prof. Storer ’s specification many times, but must 
confess that I am unable to grasp his meaning. I may also remark 
that this and the succeeding specification were referred to Mr. E. M. 
Nelson, who, when returning them, wrote to say that he could make 
nothing of them. However, I submit the following quotations, so 
that the Fellows of the Society may have some idea as to the gist of 
Prof. Storer’s remarks. He says, 44 having discovered that the eye, 
when form’d proper for distinct vision, is in every respect in effect 
the same as a plain mirrour . . . therefore the eye is properly a 
dilating catadioptrick refractor. But the eye is to be greatly assisted 
by means of spherical, or glasses with unequal forms ... in order 
to form the image in a true dilating or pantagraphycal parelelism, to 
be inlarged or diminished at pleasure . . . without distortion or 
losing the light by such changes with the same glasses and by which 
glasses rays of light shall be reflected and varied so often and untill 
the dilating paralelism formed by them be agreeable to the paralelism 
form’d by the eye that are to receive them ; for in the same manner 
as the eye forms and acts as a plain mirrour, so rays of light under 
every change, by the means of the aforesaid Invention, shall likewise 
form an image from an object in a perfect true paralelism, and which 
said image meeting the paralelism of the eye, the image then becomes 
in a centric, dilating or pantagraphical paralelism, to be diminished or 
enlarged ad infinitum, even to an angle of one third of the hemisphere, 
which human eye is capable of receiving, and in such angle no light 
ought to be lost. But magnifying powers, field of, and distinctness 
is preserved far superior to the most powerfull telescope, or the best 
optical instruments of the various kinds ever yet known, or that can 
be made on any other principle, by which means microscopes . . . 
are made to have superior powers with more light and greater 
distinctness, as instead of the object glass of microscopes . . . being 
* Specification No. 1252, dated April 10th and Aug. 10th, 1780. Keprinted in 
