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In the 1400s the art of grinding lenses was developed to provide spectacle in the effort to improve eyesight. There is talk of spectacles being invented in Italy in the late 1200s to early 1300s as well.
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Hans and Zacharias Janssen put two lenses in a tube effectively creating the first microscope.
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Thomas Digges' and Hans Leppershey paved a way with the telescope that lead to the genius Galileo working off and improving the telescope with a focusing device. Around the same time Sir Isaac Newton invented the reflecting telescope.
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Robert Hooke was the first to describe and give the name to cells after cutting open a cork and examining it under a primitive microscope describing what he saw as tiny boxes, which he thought looked like tiny rooms and therefore he names cells. -
Robert Hooke publishes his findings in the first book studying work with microscopes called Micrographia. This includes the descriptions of cork and the ability is has to float in water.
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Francisco Redi did the first biological experiment. He place meat in flasks, one sealed and one open to see whether life could spontaneously appear or not. His revealed that it could not because the flask that was left open was exposed to flies which laid eggs and the flask that was sealed was not exposed to anything that would cause life therefore life was not spontaneously created.
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Anton van Leeuwenkoek obtsevered pond water through a self created magnifying lens. After seeing tiny organisms he named them animalcules. This was the first. time viewing microscopic living things and gave more insight into how cells grow and live. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek is the first to describe cells and bacteria after examining blood, insects and many other objects while using a simple microscope containing only one lens.
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Mid 1700's Robert Hooke invented the iris diaphragm a key component of the modern light microscope.
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Charles Hall invents thee achromatic lens by using two different kinds of lenses that would realign collars with minimal impact.
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John Needham conducted an experiment proposing that life could spontaneously generate by heating tubes with gravy, he believe he heated the gravy enough to kill any bacteria that would grow but he did not heat it enough and proved that life did spontaneously generate, but the was a failed experiment. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani redid John's experiment but did it right. he heated the gravy post the boiling point and truly killed all the bacteria. He then sealed the bottle and left on open. the sealed bottle did not form any new life where the open bottle did. it was thought at this time that air was needed for life to spontaneously generate.
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Joseph Jackson Lister combined weak lenses to reduce the problem of spherical aberration. At certain distances this produced good magnification.
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Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann views the nucleus while examining plant and animal cells. They made the conclusion that all living things were made up of cells and that cells were the smallest unit in any living thing. This then was the bases for cell theory.
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Louis Pasteur then added to what Lazzaro had done but instead used a swan neck flask. This did not allow particle from the air to enter the tube as they would get caught in the neck of the tube. This then further proved that spontaneous generation was disapproved.
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The Ernst Leitz Company corrects an issue with the introduction fo the first revolving turret with no less than 5 objectives.
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The patented illumination device was produced with the joint efforts of Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe
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Ernst Abbe used a mathematical theory involving wavelength of light to calculate the maximum resolution possible in microscopes.
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Walter Fleming discovers cell mitosis and chromosomes.
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Kohler achieved an almost perfect image using double diaphragms.
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Richard Zsigmondy was the creator of a microscope that was possible of studying objects below the wavelength of light.
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Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska invent the electron microscope.
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Fritz Zernike was the inventor of a microscope able to study colourless and transparent biological materials.
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Ernst Ruska produces a microscope known as the electron microscope. This used electrons to improve resolution allowing the exploration to expand.
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Ernst Ruska improved the transmission electron microscope and build the scanning electron microscpe
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Hans Lippershey and his son experimented with a variety of lenses. By placing a lens in a tube to magnify objects they created the compound microscope.
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The classic experiment on the origin of life conducted by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey consisted of using water, ammonia, hydrogen and methane was used to simulate Earth's atmosphere. -
Lynn Margulis made the first case of endosymbiosis. The evolution of cells and comparing mitochondria's and chloroplasts to bacteria and plant cells. Showing that there is evolution is cells. What used to be free living bacteria are now apart of cells through evolution.
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Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer made a huge development in microscopes when inventing the scanning and tunnelling microscope that has the ability to produce three-dimensional images down to the atomic level.