Magnification

The convex lenses we term magnifying glasses have been around since truly ancient times. They allow us to view items enlarged and to start fires by focusing sunlight on a point on combustible material.

This is the 3000-year-old rock-crystal Nimrud Lens, from an Assyrian palace dug up in Iraq.

The first m/g I owned as a child was small and made entirely of clear plastic. It came with either a stamp-collecting kit or a Bug Catcher toy. I do not remember which one.

Discovering I could use it to burn a hole in a dry brown leaf was an astounding scientific breakthrough. But I never used it to fry unsuspecting ants. Nor did I ever hit them with a cricket bat, as depicted in the background of a scene in "Reckless Kelly", a 1993 Aussie comedy on which my mate DB was an extra.

I was 20 when that movie dropped. Years earlier, though, another friend, DP, had shown me how a magnifying glass could add “battle damage” to action figures. He liked to have two copies of the same figurine, and swap in the scorched version after the character lost a gunfight.

He also crucified an Action Man high on a tree in his backyard.

Seeing an m/g makes me think of Sherlock Holmes and, by extension, a further image from my youth – the canine mascot of the MS Read-A-Thon, attempting to hunt down a cure for multiple sclerosis.

These days, it has also become the universal symbol for a computer/internet search of some description. The icon isn’t usually red, but I just happen to like this graphic. Sue me.

There’s a rumour that men with grey creeping into their goatees now need to employ a magnifying glass when reading magazine articles of a certain font size. To study the finer points of an insect or stamp, the sad bastards would probably require a microscope.