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4000 BCE
The Water Microscope
According to ancient Chinese text, the Chinese viewed magnified things through a lens at the end of a tube, and the tube was filled with different levels of water depending on the amount of magnification they wanted to achieve. (Note: It was more than 2022 years ago but it would not allow me to submit the event without a year. Even with the BC checked off.) -
1200
Telescopes
In the 13th century, a Englishman, by the name Roger Bacon discussed telescopes at length. Telescopes are relevant to microscopes because they are the trace to increasingly different and complicated uses of lenses. Which is the essential optical component of any microscope. -
1284
Spectacles
The year 1284 is the earliest to be recorded that has been claimed the spectacles were invented. the evidence was the tombstone of individuals that claimed on their tombstone. That they had the process of the spectacles. -
Hans and Zacharias Janssen make the first microscope
Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans, were experimenting with several different lenses in a tube, discovered that nearby objects appeared more enlarged. The first compound microscope produced by the Janssen's was a tube with lenses at each end. The magnification of these early scopes ranged from 3X to 9X, depending on the size of the openings. -
Robert Hooke first to view a cell.
In 1665, Robert Hooke, was the first one to discover cells and the structure. He took a slice of a cork and found patterns on the cork. His description was that they where tiny box like figures and they looked like rooms. -
Spontaneous Generation - Redi
Redi set up flasks containing different meat, half of the flasks were sealed, and half were open. He repeated the experiment but, instead of sealing the flasks, he covered half of them with gauze so air could not enter. Even though the meat in all of the flasks were putrefied, he found that only in the open and uncovered flasks, flies had entered freely, and the meat contained maggots. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek created microscope and the first to observe bacteria.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used single-lens microscope he made, to make the first observations of bacteria and protozoa. His deep research on growth of small animals like fleas, mussels, and eels helped disprove the theory of spontaneous generation of life. -
John Needham Experiment
John Needham challenged Redi's experiment by conducting his own experiment which he poured a broth (gravy), into a bottle, heated the bottle to kill everything inside, and then he left it open or sealed it (depending on the report). Few days later, he recorded presence of life in the broth and declared that life had been created from nonlife. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani disproves spontaneous generation.
Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted his own experiment by putting broth in two separate bottles, boiling the broth in the bottles, then sealing one bottle and leaving the other bottle open. Few days later, the unsealed bottle had small living things. The sealed bottle showed no signs of life. -
Joseph Jackson Lister's microscope
Joseph Jackson Lister reduced the problem with spherical aberration by using several weak lenses together at marked distances gave magnification without a blurred image. -
Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann concluded that cells are part of living thing.
They studied plant and animal cells and were able to view the nucleus, the nervous system of the cell that controls cell function. They came to the conclusion in all their studies. That all living things are made up of cells and that the cell is the smallest unit in a living thing. These are the ideas that form the basis for cell theory. -
Rudolf Virchow proposed that cells come from other cells.
Rudolf Virchow studied the cellular pathology and he proposed that cells come from other cells. Virchow did tests to prove that new cells come from already existing cells and that they do not appear spontaneously. This theory was important to be able to understand cells and cell theory because it explains how living things can grow and reproduce. -
Louis Pasteur Experiment
Louis Pasteur used a different and special flask in his experiment. The flask had a neck that was shaped like an S or the neck of a swan, that's why it's named “Swan Neck Flask.” He put a broth in the flask, that he called the “infusion.” He boiled the infusion killing any microorganisms that were already present. Then he let the infusion sit. -
Ernst Abbe microscope
It was known as Abbe’s theory, stated that image resolution was related to diffraction effect. It showed that the resolution capacity of light microscopes is limited by the wavelength of light. -
Richard Zsigmondy microscope
The sols polarised and coloured light in peculiar ways, and Zsigmondy used a microscope to measure their absorption. Noticing that clear solutions caused beams of light to disperse into cones inspired Zsigmondy to look at his solutions through the microscope in a new way. Rather than illuminating them from below, he brought the light in at right angles. To his delight, his field of view was speckled with dancing points of light. -
Frits Zernike microscope
Zernike built a microscope that was based on phase contrast illumination, but at the start received little attention. At the time, a lack of image contrast was experienced with common microscopic techniques it was one of the major concerns in optical microscopy. -
Ernst Ruska microscope
The construction of microscopes using electrons, with wavelengths 1000 times shorter than of light, could provide detailed picture of an object than a microscope using light, which the magnification is limited by the size of wavelengths. In 1931, Ernst Ruska demonstrated that a magnetic coil could be used as an electron lens, and use several coils to build the first electron microscope in 1933. -
Miller and Urey Experiment
At the end of one week of the experiment, Miller and Urey observed, that the cooled water, had as much as 10-15% of the carbon within the system was now formed of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed amino acids, including 13 of the 22 that are used to make proteins in living cells. -
Biologist Lynn Margulis first made the case for endosymbiosis.
Evolutionist Lynn Margulis gave evidence that a major organizational event in the history of life. Involved the merging of two or more lineages through symbiosis. -
Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer microscope
The powerful microscope technique forms an image of individual atoms on a metal or semiconductor surface by scanning the tip of a needle over the surface at only a few atomic diameters.