Who made the microscope?

As early as the first century BC, people have discovered that when observing small objects through spherical transparent objects, they can be magnified and imaged. Later, we gradually came to understand the law that the surface of spherical glass can make objects magnified and imaged.

In 1590, Dutch and Italian eyeglass makers had already created magnifying instruments similar to microscopes. Around 1610, while studying telescopes, Galileo of Italy and Kepler of Germany changed the distance between the objective lens and the eyepiece to arrive at a reasonable optical path structure for the microscope. The optical craftsmen at that time were engaged in the manufacture, promotion and improvement of microscopes. .

In the mid-17th century, England's Hooke and Holland's Leeuwenhoek both made outstanding contributions to the development of microscopes. Around 1665, Hooke added coarse and fine focusing mechanisms, an illumination system, and a worktable for carrying specimens to the microscope. These components have been continuously improved and become the basic building blocks of modern microscopes.

During the period from 1673 to 1677, Leeuwenhoek made single-component magnifying glass-type high-power microscopes, nine of which have survived to this day. Hooke and Leeuwenhoek used homemade microscopes to make outstanding achievements in the study of the microstructure of animals and plants.

In the 19th century, the emergence of high-quality achromatic immersion objectives greatly improved the ability of microscopes to observe fine structures. Amici was the first to use a liquid immersion objective in 1827. In the 1870s, the German Abbe laid the classical theoretical foundation for microscope imaging. These promoted the rapid development of microscope manufacturing and microscopic observation technology, and provided powerful tools for biologists and medical scientists including Koch and Pasteur to discover bacteria and microorganisms in the second half of the 19th century.

While the structure of the microscope itself is developing, microscopic observation technology is also constantly innovating: polarized light microscopy appeared in 1850; interference microscopy appeared in 1893; in 1935, the Dutch physicist Zell Nick invented phase contrast microscopy, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1953.

The classical optical microscope is just a combination of optical components and precision mechanical components. It uses the human eye as a receiver to observe the magnified image. Later, a photographic device was added to the microscope, using photosensitive film as a receiver that could be recorded and stored. In modern times, optoelectronic components, television camera tubes and charge couplers are commonly used as receivers of microscopes, and coupled with microelectronic computers, they form a complete image information collection and processing system.

An optical lens made of glass or other transparent materials with a curved surface can magnify objects into images. Optical microscopes use this principle to enlarge tiny objects to a size that is large enough for human eyes to observe. Modern optical microscopes usually use two levels of magnification, which are completed by the objective lens and the eyepiece respectively. The object being observed is located in front of the objective lens. It is magnified by the objective lens at the first level and becomes an inverted real image. Then this real image is magnified by the eyepiece at the second level and becomes a virtual image. What the human eye sees is the virtual image. The total magnification of a microscope is the product of the objective magnification and the eyepiece magnification. Magnification refers to the magnification ratio of linear dimensions, not the area ratio.