A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope. The microscope was invented more than four centuries ago. In the late 1500s, two Dutch eyeglass makers, Zacharias Jansen and his father Hans Jansen, built the first microscope. They put several magnifying lenses in a tube. They discovered that using more than one lens magnified objects more than a single lens. Their... Show more

A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope.

The microscope was invented more than four centuries ago. In the late 1500s, two Dutch eyeglass makers, Zacharias Jansen and his father Hans Jansen, built the first microscope. They put several magnifying lenses in a tube. They discovered that using more than one lens magnified objects more than a single lens. Their simple microscope could make small objects appear nine times bigger than they really were.    
In the mid-1600s, English scientist Robert Hooke was one of the first scientists to observe living things with a microscope. He published the first book of microscopic studies, called Micrographia. It includes wonderful drawings of microscopic organisms and other tiny objects. One of Hooke's most important discoveries came when he viewed thin slices of cork under a microscope. Cork is made from the bark of a tree. When Hooke viewed it under a microscope, he saw many tiny compartments that he called cells. Hooke was the first person to observe cells from an organism.    
In the late 1600s, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch lens maker and scientist, started making much stronger microscopes. His microscopes could magnify objects as much as 270 times their actual size. Van Leeuwenhoek made many scientific discoveries using his microscopes. He was the first to see and describe bacteria. He observed them in a sample of plaque that he had scraped off his own teeth. He also saw yeast cells, human sperm cells, and the microscopic life teeming in a drop of pond water. He called the microscopic living organisms he observed animalcules.    

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