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A glass sphere that magnified reading materials when it was placed on top of them was invented. This was the first vision aid called a reading stone. Inventor unknown.
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Salvino D’Armate is credited with inventing the first eye glasses that were wearable.
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Robert Hooke looked at a sliver (piece) of cork through a microscope lens and noticed cells in it.
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Anton Van Leeuwenhoek built a simple microscope with only one lens to examine yeast, blood, insects and other tiny objects. He was the first person to describe bacteria.
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Joseph Jackson Lister created a model of the compound microscope. He showed that several weak lenses used together at certain distances gave good images without blurring.
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Ernst Ruska co-invented the electron microscope. This made it possible to view objects as small as the diameter of an atom.
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Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer invented the scanning tunnel microscope that is the strongest microscope to date.
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Scientists are working on a cellscope. The cellscope is a high magnification attachment for cell phones. It would allow scientists to take detailed images of microscopic items using the phone’s camera.
