Currently, the iPhone 5 is selling for $799.99 at RadioShack—at least twice as much as most high-end microscope models would set you back. But can your average microscope shoot video or send texts?

The earliest example of a stereo microscope was designed and built-in 1671 by Cherubin d’Orleans, though it was a pseudostereoscopic design, which had major flaws. Only by application of additional ...