Microscope Timeline

By jeckman
  • 1400

    Grinding lenses

    developed in italy, used to make spectacles to improve eyesight.

  • Zacharias (and Hans) Janssen

    make the first microscope by placing two lenses in a tube.

  • Robert Hooke

    described his observations of various objects with his microscope and publishes his results in Micrographia. He used the word "cell" to describing biological organisms.

  • Anton van Leeuwenhoek

    Known as the father of microbiology. He designed a single-lens microscope and used it to be the first to work with microbes.

  • Joseph Jackson Lister

    found that several weak lenses could be used together at certain distances to give good magnification without the image being blurry.

  • Ernst Abbe

    discovered the resolution limit of a microscope.

  • Frits Zernike

    invents the phase-contrast microscope.

  • Ernst Ruska

    develops the electron microscope.

  • Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer

    invented the scanning tunneling microscope.