Microscope

Microscope

When William of Orange, that enterprising and daring Dutch nobleman, invaded Merrie England in 1688, there lived in the town of Delft in Holland a nondescript little man who was to invade a whole world and make the exploits of William seem pale by comparison.

Who Made the First Microscope?

This Dutchman, Antony Leeuwenhoek, was merely the janitor of the city hall. The townspeople of Delft thought him a trifle "touched" because he spent all his spare time grinding lenses out of glass. He found childish delight in seeing little things bigger than they appear to the naked eye.

The magnifying properties of glass lenses had been known for many centuries. And a hundred years before Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch Lippershey and the Italian Galileo had put lenses together to make the telescope, which brings the stars, apparently much nearer to the earth. But before Leeuwenhoek no one had been interested in making magnifying lenses to examine all the things on earth that unaided eye cannot see.