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Time Line
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14th
century – The art of grinding lenses
is developed in Italy and spectacles are made to
improve eyesight.
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1590 –
Dutch lens grinders Hans and Zacharias Janssen make
the first microscope by placing two lenses in a
tube.
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1667 –
Robert Hooke studies various object with his
microscope and publishes his results in Micrographia.
Among his work were a description of cork and its
ability to float in water.
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1675 – Anton van
Leeuwenhoek uses a simple microscope with only one
lens to look at blood, insects and many other
objects. He was first to describe cells and bacteria,
seen through his very small microscopes with, for his
time, extremely good lenses.
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18th century –
Several technical innovations make microscopes better
and easier to handle, which leads to microscopy
becoming more and more popular among scientists. An
important discovery is that lenses combining two
types of glass could reduce the chromatic effect,
with its disturbing halos resulting from differences
in refraction of light.
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1830 – Joseph Jackson
Lister reduces the problem with spherical aberration
by showing that several weak lenses used together at
certain distances gave good magnification without
blurring the image.
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1878 – Ernst Abbe
formulates a mathematical theory correlating
resolution to the wavelength of light. Abbes formula
make calculations of maximum resolution in
microscopes possible.
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1903 – Richard Zsigmondy
develops the ultramicroscope and is able to study
objects below the wavelength of light.
The
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1925 »
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1932 – Frits Zernike
invents the phase-contrast microscope that allows the
study of colorless and transparent biological
materials.
The
Nobel Prize in Physics 1953 »
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1938 – Ernst Ruska
develops the electron microscope. The ability to use
electrons in microscopy greatly improves the
resolution and greatly expands the borders of
exploration.
The
Nobel Prize in Physics 1986 »
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1981 – Gerd Binnig and
Heinrich Rohrer invent the scanning tunneling
microscope that gives three-dimensional images of
objects down to the atomic level.
The
Nobel Prize in Physics 1986 »
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