Digital microscopes

Heritage digital microscopy is a non-invasive, low-cost technique that substantially enhances the study of:

• the material properties of material culture;
• the surface of artefacts;
• the ways things were made;
• the traces of use and handling practices of heritage artefacts;
• and the experiential dimensions of sensory engagement with historical objects.

We are committed to the generation of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data.

Our exceptional collection of digital microscopes have a wide range of features, such as:

• advanced microscopic analysis at a magnification range of 10–900x, allowing for high-resolution analysis of material details as small as 1.5µm;
• automatic magnification reading;
• flexible LED control with different lighting options and polarisation filters;
• a wide range of options of enhanced microscopic photography including standard, image stacking, extended depth of field, and extended dynamic range photography;
• a wide range of wavelength options ranging from UV (~395nm) to normal visible light to NIR (~940nm), making visible on a microscopic level what is beyond the range of human visibility.

Our collection is unique in terms of quality and quantity, making the University of Manchester’s History Department the host of the largest collection of cutting-edge digital microscopes at any Faculty of Humanities in the UK.

We continue to expand our collection to ensure access to the most cutting-edge digital microscopes available.

Members of The Bodies, Environments and Material Culture Collective can use our loan procedure to borrow some of our portable digital microscopes for collections-based research.