This saved the company millions of dollars. Rife designed and built an X-ray machine that checked each bearing coming out of the plant and rejected any faulty bearings before they were sent out as finished products. Rife’s help to solve a quality control manufacturing problem. He patented the Tapered Roller Bearing in 1898 and established the Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company. Timken had been born in Germany and emigrated to the United States when he was seven. Rife met with industrial tycoon Henry Timken. Microscope #5, built about 1938, is currently in the Science Museum in London, England, and while it is not available for normal viewing, groups of researchers have been able to closely examine it, and a videotape of it was made in 1999. Rife (in 1939), and at some point, a newer #5 microscope is sent. Later it is mentioned that #4 was sent back to Dr. In papers from England in the 1938 period, it is mentioned that #4 had been sent to England, and a technician working for Dr. Rife commented in one of his letters that #4 had been built at the request of a manufacturer, but he does not say who that might have been. Microscope #4, which had no polarizing stage, but offered magnifications up to 15,000X, was built in 1935, and appears to have been an early version of a much simpler Universal Microscope, which Dr. The Universal Microscope was the unit which allowed for examination of live virus samples. Microscope #3, built in 1933 and shown below, was the "Universal Microscope" which had provisions for polarized, bright field, darkfield, infrared and ultraviolet imaging. Arthur Kendall's use, apparently for some time in the 1932 time-frame. That microscope was sent to Northwestern University for Dr. Microscope #2 was similar in construction, built in 1923, in a vertical format like a standard microscope. Rife built his first known microscope, "Number 1" in 1920 on an optical bench like a lathe bed.
Commander USNR, he worked with the United States Navy before and during World War I. During that same year, he married Mamie Quill. In 1912, Rife moved to San Diego, California where he established his first research laboratory. Passionate about the ability of microscopes to make organisms visible to the human eye, Rife set out to improve their resolution and magnification. From 1904 to 1908, Rife worked with Hans Luckel, Carl Zeiss’ optical scientist and researcher at Zeiss Optical Works. Heidelberg University was so appreciative, they awarded him an honorary Doctor of Parasitology.
He then attended Heidelberg University in Germany, where he developed photomicrographs for their Atlas of Parasites. In 1905, he entered John Hopkins University to pursue medical studies, but his interest in bacteriology took him into the world of microbiology. Because his father, a mechanical engineer, worked 14-16 hours a day, the young Rife was put in the care of his aunt, Nina Colber Rife Dryden, who raised him as her own. His mother died when he was just eight months old. was born in Elkhorn, Nebraska on May 16, 1888.