In the late 1940's, Carl Zeiss developed a microscope called ‘Standard’. Around 1860, Rudolf Winkel started a company for optical and precision mechanical instruments. In 1911 the company of Rudolf Winkel merged with Carl Zeiss and from that time on all instruments carried the name Winkel-Zeiss. During the 1940s the name changed to Zeiss-Winkel and in 1949 the first Zeiss-Winkel Standard microscope was manufactured by Carl Zeiss under the direction of Kurt Michel. The name Zeiss-Winkel was used until 1957, thereafter the name became Carl Zeiss and the Standard microscope was called Zeiss Standard. The Zeiss Standard was a very successful microscope and became a household name in the medical world. The black Zeiss Standard was produced until the early 1960s, after this the gray Standard was introduced and this was a microscope with a different mechanical construction.

The microscope shown below is an early Standard, the Zeiss-Winkel Standard GF (= Grobtrieb / Feintrieb). The coarse adjustment works on the arm and not on the stage as in the later Standards. The stiffness of the focus adjustment can be adjusted by turning the fine adjustment knobs in opposite directions. A magnification changer is built into the head which can be used to switch the magnification from 1x to 1.6x.

I use this microscope mainly with normal achromats and for photography I use either a straight photo-tube or a trinocular tube. The Zeiss-Winkel achromats are good and for photography I prefer them over the later Carl Zeiss achromats. See also 'The achromatic objectives from Zeiss and Zeiss-Winkel' in the technical section.

Zeiss-Winkel Standard GF, the black classic. Shown here with phase contrast condenser, magnification changer and nosepiece for 4 objectives.