"They were incredibly small, nay so small, in my sight,

that I judged that even if 100 of these very wee animals

lay stretched out one against another, they could

not reach to the length of a grain of coarse Sand."

[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek describes his discovery of bacteria]



'Micrographia Nova'

John Marshall's New Invented Double Microscope

for Viewing the Circulation of the Blood (~1698-1700)



[By the time I removed the enormous and intrusive watermark from this image, I had *somehow* forgotten the name of the commercial art site from which it was sourced.]

'Kurzer Unterricht von der Beschaffenheit und dem Gebrauch der Vergrösserungsgläser und Teleskopien'

'Le Microscope à la Portée de Tout le Monde'

"The works of nature are the only source of true knowledge, and the study of them the most noble employment of the mind of man.... Microscopes furnish us as it were with a new sense, unfolding the amazing operations of nature, and presenting us with wonders unthought of by former ages."

(1645-1723)

Bacteriological Reviews

into

-------------------------



'The Book of Optics'

'The Book of Optics'

[*There's an intentional omission of references here to any ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman observations about crystals, glass manufacturing and magnification phenomena because they don't appear to have had a direct role in the evolution of technologies that culminated in the invention of the microscope.]

occhiolino

'microscope'

'Micrographia'

'Micrographia'

[As per usual, the choice of illustrations above was largely determined by what was available/what I found and shouldn't be taken as a 'definitive illustrated guide to the history of microscopy' or the somesuch. The same goes for the text: all care is taken (hopefully) but what I've written shouldn't be regarded as authoritative. There may be intentional mistakes. Or there may not. The history is convoluted and complex and requires reading from a number of sources. In fact, I'm not sure the internet is the best place to do this.]