 This shift was facilitated by Dr C. R. Burch of the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory in Bristol who led the University's optics group.Burch was a physical thinker but recognised the benefits of strong mathematical ability in understanding physics, and so encouraged Linfoot in his transition.Linfoot availed himself of the laboratory's facilities to first construct his own telescope and later to apply the theory of aspheric lenses to create a new microscope which he would exhibit at the 1939 Annual Exhibition of the Physical Society.