scotoscopen.
/ˈskəʊtə(ʊ)skəʊp/, U.S. /ˈskoʊdəˌskoʊp/ 1. Microscopy. An instrument which illuminates an object so that it can be more easily viewed with a microscope, comprising a glass globe filled with brine for concentrating light from a lamp, a convex lens being used to focus this light on the object. Now historical.The invention of the scotoscope is attributed to Robert Hooke (see Notes & Rec. Royal Soc. 42 (1988) 132). An illustration of it is printed in Hooke's Micrographia (1665), although Hooke does not use the term scotoscope in this book. See also note at sense 2.
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the world > physical sensation > sight and vision > optical instruments > magnification or magnifying instruments > [noun] > instrument for seeing in dark
scotoscope1664
1664 S. Pepys Diary 13 Aug. (1971) V. 240 There comes also Mr. Reeve with a Microscope and Scotoscope..a curious curiosity it is to see objects in a dark room with.
1669 J. Collins in I. Newton Corr. (1959) I. 4 The perfection of Tellescopes, Microscopes, Scotoscopes, and burning Glasses, by figures, as easily made, as those that are plaine, or Sphaericall.
1674 R. Hooke Diary 31 May (1935) Meditated about clepsydra, quadrant, scotoscopes. &c.
1924 Nature 5 July 11/2 Can any of your readers explain the principle of the scotoscope which Pepys defines in his diary..as an instrument enabling objects to be viewed ‘in a dark room’?
1999 L. Jardine Ingenious Pursuits (2000) ii. 44 By adjusting the relative positions of lamp, globe and lens he [sc. Hooke] found he could improve the magnified image of his subject considerably. He called it his ‘scotoscope’.
2. A telescope incorporating an image intensifier, allowing use in dark conditions. rare.This sense probably developed from dictionary definitions of scotoscope which were based on Pepys's use of the term (see quot. 1664 at sense 1); for example, N.E.D. (1910) defines scotoscope as: ‘An instrument which enables the user to see in the dark’.
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the world > physical sensation > sight and vision > optical instruments > instrument for distant vision > [noun] > telescope > other telescopes
polemoscope1668
finder1738
night-glass1758
collimator1825
floating collimator1833
lookdown1865
guiding telescope1897
autocollimator1903
kinetheodolite1941
finderscope1946
satellite telescope1951
scotoscope1964
starlight scope1964
1964 Appl. Optics 3 671 The scotoscope can be arranged to give a color presentation; however, when this is done, it is at the expense of a fairly high percentage of the photons incident from the scene.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1664