Microscopes have come an unbelievably long way since they were first developed in the late 16th century. While Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is often credited with being the creator of the first microscope, it was actually one of two optics pioneers who is the real father of the instrument: Zacharias Jansen or Hans Lippershey. Of the three, it is Lippershey who is most widely considered to be its inventor, an idea which is especially credible given that he was also the designer of the first modern-style telescope. Leeuwenhoek would not be born for nearly half a century after the earliest models were first built.

The microscopes of van Leeuwenhoek’s invention provided at best 275 x magnification. For its time it was truly impressive and broke new ground, enabling a host of scientific discoveries and advancing scientific knowledge and medicine in almost every way imaginable. Today of course, even many inexpensive of microscopes are capable of much higher levels of magnification and a variety of new microscopy technologies are available to allow scientists, physicians and researchers to get a close up look at the invisible world around us.

Optics have increased in sophistication by orders of magnitude in the last four centuries, with the lenses being used in microscopes being immeasurably improved and more powerful with every passing year. It’s not only in the design of the lenses used that microscopy has advanced – there are an array of new technologies behind the magnification power of the modern laboratory microscope.