From the hand microscope to the microscope camera to the microscope app for iPhone, the microscope has become more accessible than ever before here in the United States and in many other places all throughout the world as well. But the microscope has not always been so easily used. In fact, when it was first ever invented it was a much different machine than what we know of microscopes today, from the USB microscope to the hand microscope and more.
The microscope dates back centuries, all the way back to the year of 1590. This was the year that the first ever microscope was created, brought into being by a man of undetermined origin. But while historians aren’t entirely sure who invented the microscope and used it for the first time ever, they have a few leads on pioneering uses of this device that has given us everything we have today, from the IOS microscope app to even the hand microscope. It was a man named Hans Lippershey who filed for the first patent of a microscope, but Zacharias Janssen and his father Hans have also been named as inventors of the microscope, as two men who made spectacles in that very same town as Hans Lippershey.
The first use of the microscope for a practical purpose is a little bit more concrete, and this has been attributed to Francesco Stelluti, an Italian scientist who made the first recorded observations through the use of a microscope a few decades later, in the year of 1625. And of course, the success of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is directly linked to the usage of a microscope as well, as it was through a microscope that he first identified and drew bacteria, changing both the fields of science and medicine forever in the year of 1683.
Microscopes had even more varied purposes as they became more widely used all throughout the seventeenth century, during the 1600s. In many cases, we see that microscopes were used in order to study the minuscule parts of insects that had, up until that point, remained a mystery to scientists all around the world. Now, thanks to the usage of the microscope and the accessibility to such a tool, they were able to explore these creatures far more thoroughly than they had ever been able to do before. Studying bugs and insects underneath microscopes became so common of a practice that microscopes of that day and age were frequently referred to as “flea glasses.”
And science was able to advance in even more ways thanks to the usage of microscopes during the seventeenth century. During the year of 1665, for instance, the discovery of cells was made. This landmark discovery has changed the way that we view so many things, such as even our basic understanding of human biology. The man who made the discovery was named Robert Hooke and it was made through the use of a microscope. When he discovered cells, however, he was actually looking at a piece of a cork instead of human or animal skin, making this discovery all the more important and astonishing, to say the least.
In today’s day and age, microscopes are still quite important – perhaps more important than they have ever been before. Microscopes are incredibly important in the field of medicine and can also be used as powerful learning tools in school settings. Teaching children of a high school age about biology wouldn’t really be as possible without accessibility to microscopes. And nowadays, microscopes come in all different shapes and sizes.
The hand microscope, for instance, is just one type. The hand microscope is typically less expensive than other types of microscopes, making the hand microscope ideal for a number of different types of applications. But aside from the hand microscope, many more exist, from the inspection microscopes to the Dino lite digital microscope. All of these microscopes are different, to be sure, but they all provide and serve a different purpose than the next one.
From the past to the current day, microscopes have long been important for discovery in this country and world as we know it.
