A DAD-OF-TWO who spent a year fixing up a world-class electron microscope in his garage is donating it to his son's school.

Chris Spencer collected the former University College London machine himself and drove it home with his father-in-law in the back of a van.

Over the past year he not only got it up to working quality, he also replaced its old Polaroid camera with a new computer to capture digital images.

The professional microscope technician has done all of it free of charge for the students at King Alfred's Academy in Wantage, like his son Samuel.

To buy a new one would have cost the school £75,000.

Mr Spencer 52, who lives in Foliat Drive, Wantage, with wife Becci, Samuel and ten-year-old Megan, was also moved by the fact that he is a former pupil himself.

He said: "I remember biology lessons, looking at drawings in text books, and to be honest it was a bit boring.

"To be able to go outside, pick a leaf of a tree then image it in real time would have made such a difference.

"Here in Oxfordshire we are in the centre of a massive scientific community, hopefully the SEM will help to encourage future homegrown scientists."

The whole saga began in 2016, when Samuel was still at Charlton Primary School and Mr Spencer agreed to give his class a 'tour' of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) which he looks after at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell, and saw the wide-eyed children's awe at its magnification power.

The next year when Samuel went to KAs, Mr Spencer got talking to head teacher Jo Halliday and she said what a difference it would make to have an SEM at the school.

He put out some feelers and discovered that UCL had an old machine which it bought for about £50,000 in the 1990s that it was looking to get rid of.

Normally, SEMs have to be transported in special air-suspension carriers to protect them from dangerous vibrations: Mr Spencer and Mrs Spencer's dad Barry Winter drove theirs home to the garage in Mr Winter's van.

Over the next 12 months Mr Spencer fixed faults, added the computer and found a company which has now offered to add an infrared viewer free of charge.

His company JEOL – the Japanese manufacturer of the machine – has also given its support.

This month he is hoping to install the microscope at King Alfred's.

The students will be able to use it to magnify pollen grains or the hairs on a fly's leg up to 100,000 times.

And more than just an educational tool, it will equip young scientists will a CV skill which will be the envy of schools for miles around.

Mr Spencer said: "The electron microscope community is very interested because if you want to employ someone to use one of these machines you have to train them up, but if there are kids with SEM experience that could be great for them."

King Alfred's head of physics Neil McFeely said: "We are extremely grateful to Chris, JEOL and UCL: I know of only a few schools that are lucky enough to have one on site – this will be of massive benefit in our science teaching across the curriculum and open up a whole new microscopic world to our students.

"We cannot thank them enough."