Timeline of microscopy

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This is a timeline of microscopy, describing important events in the history and development of the technology.

Big picture

Time period Development summary
13th century The development of lenses in eyeglasses probably leads to the wide spread use of simple microscopes (single lens magnifying glasses) with limited magnification.[1]"[2]
14th century Spectacles are first made in Italy.[2]
17th century Before the century, almose no one suspected there was life too small to see with the naked eye, with fleas thought to be the smallest possible form of life.[3] Johannes Kepler is generally considered by neuroscentists as the first to recognize that images are projected, inverted and reversed by the eye's lens onto the retina.[4] "Then, in the mid 17th century, an Englishman, Robert Hooke and a Dutchman, Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek took the microscope to new levels"[2]
18th century Looking through lenses becomes very popular, with many having a microscope when able to afford.[5]
19th century Achromatic microscopes are invented in the first half of the century.[5]
20th century The first electron microscope is invented by Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska, blasting past the optical limitations of the light. The second major development for microscopes in the 20th century is the evolution of the mass market.[2]
21st century Dino-Lite Digital microscopes become one of the more original innovations since the 21st century. Dino-Lite are handheld digital microscopes.[2]

Full timeline

Year Event type Details Location
~700 BC Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians start polishing quartz crystals as an attempt to replicate optical habilities of water. The Nimrud lens is on of the most famous examples.[4][2] Egypt, Irak
167 BC Simple microscopes made of a lens and a water-filled tube to visualize the unseen are developed in China.[6]" China
100 AD Glass is invented and the Romans looking through the glass and test it, discovering that if helding one of these “lenses” over an object, the object would look larger.[7]
~1000 AD Chinese elderly monks use the reading stones, which are considered the first vision aids.[8][9][10][2] China
~1021 AD Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham writes his Book of Optics, the result of investigations based on experimental evidence. The book would eventually transform how light and vision are understood.[11][12][2] Middle East
1267 English philosopher Roger Bacon suggests the idea of the telescope and the microscope.[3] United Kingdom
1284 Salvino D’Armate from Italy is credited with inventing the first wearable eye glasses.[2][8] Italy
14th century Spectacles are first made in Italy.[2] Italy
1590 Dutch spectacle makers, Zaccharias Janssen and his father Hans develop both telescopes and microscopes, while experimenting with several lenses in a tube, including the first practical microscope with a magnification range of three times to nine times.[7][13][14][15] Netherlands
1609 Italian scientist Galileo Galilei develops a compound microscope, with a convex and a concave lenses both fitting into a tube.[5][2][16] Italy
1619 "1619 - Earliest recorded description of a compound microscope, Dutch Ambassador Willem Boreel sees one in London in the possession of Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel, an instrument about eighteen inches long, two inches in diameter, and supported on 3 brass dolphins."[17][18][19]
1621 "1621 - Cornelius Drebbel presents, in London, a compound microscope with a convex objective and a convex eyepiece (a "Keplerian" microscope). "
1625 German papal doctor Giovanni Faber first coins the name microscope.[2] Germany
1665 English physicist Robert Hooke observes living cells and publishes Micrographia, in which he coins the term ‘cells’ when describing tissue. The book outlines Hooke's various studies using the microscope.[2][3]
1675 Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek manages to use a microscope with one lens to observe insects and other specimen. Leeuwenhoek is the first to observe bacteria.[2][3]
1830 British physicist Joseph Jackson Lister develops a method to construct lens systems avoiding the effects of spherical aberration.[20][21][22] United Kingdom
1830 Achromatic microscopes are invented.[5]
1833 Scottish scientist Robert Brown becomes the first to describe his observation of the nucleus in plant cells.[5]
1850s American scientist John Leonard Riddell at Tulane University, develops the first practical binocular microscope.[23][24][25]
1863 English microscopist Henry Clifton Sorby pioners the use of metallurgical microscope for inverstigating the microstructures of a variety of materials.[26][27] United Kingdom
1860s German physicist Ernst Abbe discovers the Abbe sine condition, a breakthrough in microscope design, which until then was largely based on trial and error. The company of Carl Zeiss exploited this discovery and becomes the dominant microscope manufacturer of its era."
1878 Ernst Abbe develops a mathematical theory linking resolution to light wavelength.[2] Germany
1879 "In 1879, Walter Flemming discovered cell mitosis and chromosomes, an achievement recognized as one of the 100 most important scientific achievements of all time."[2]
1880 The first microtomes begin to be used enabling significantly thinner samples to be prepared in order to improve sample.[2]
1893 " In 1893, another Zeiss employee, August Kohler figured out an unparalleled illumination system that is still known as Kohler illumination. Using double diaphragms, the system provides triple benefits of a uniformly illuminated specimen, a bright image and minimal glare. In other words, Kohler achieved an almost perfect image."[2]
1900 "UV and Phase: By 1900, the theoretic limit of resolution for visible light microscopes (2000 angstroms) had been reached. "[2]
1903 Austrian-Hungarian chemist Richard Zsigmondy develops the ultra-microscope, which allows the study objects below the wavelenght of light.[2][8] Austria
1904 "In 1904, Zeiss overcame this limitation with the introduction the first commercial UV microscope with resolution twice that of a visible light microscope."[2]
1928 Irish physicist Edward Hutchinson Synge publishes his theory underlying the near-field scanning optical microscope.[28][29][30]
1931 German physicist Ernst Ruska along with Max Kroll invent the first electron microscope.[31][32][33] Germany
1932 "1932: Transparent biological materials are studied for the first time using Frits Xernike's invention of the phase-contrast microscope."[2]
1932 Frits Zernike develops phase contrast illumination, which allows the imaging of transparent samples. By using interference rather than absorption of light, transparent samples, such as cells, can be imaged without having to use staining techniques.[2] Netherlands
1936 German physicist Erwin Wilhelm Müller invents the field emission microscope.[31][2][34][35] Germany
1938 "1938: Just six years after the invention of the phase contrast microscope comes the electron microscope, developed by Ernst Ruska, who realized that using electrons in microscopy enhanced resolution."[2]
1938 Canadian-American scientist and James Hillier designs and builds, with Albert Prebus, the first successful high-resolution electron microscope in North America.[36] Canada
1939 Siemens launches the first commercial electron microscope.[4] Germany
1930 Dutch physicist Frits Zernike discovers he could view unstained cells using the phase angle of rays,and invents the phase contrast microscope. His innovartion would not introduced until.[2][37] Netherlands
1942 " Then, in 1942, Ruska improved on the transmission electron microscope (previously buil by Knoll and Ruska) by building built the first scanning electron microscope (SEM) that transmits a beam of electrons across the specimen."[2]
1942 E.F Burton and W.Kohl publish The Electron Microscope.[38]
1951 German physicist Wilhelm Müller invents the field ion microscope and becomes the first to see atoms.[3][35] Germany
1953 Frits Zernike is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope."[39]
1955 Polish physicist Georges Nomarski publishes the theoretical basis of Differential interference contrast microscopy. An optical microscopy technique used to enhance the contrast in unstained, transparent samples.[40][41][42] France
1957 "Marvin Minsky patents the principle of confocal imaging. Using a scanning point of light, confocal microscopy gives slightly higher resolution than conventional light microscopy and makes it easier to view ‘virtual slices’ through a thick specimen."[2]
1962 "Osamu Shimomura, Frank Johnson and Yo Saiga discover green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. GFP fluoresces bright green when exposed to blue light."[2]
1967 Erwin Wilhelm Müller adds time-of-flight spectroscopy to the field ion microscope, and develops the atom probe field ion microscope.[35][35] United States
1972 "Godfrey Hounsfield and Allan Cormack develop the computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanner. With the help of a computer, the device combines many X-ray images to generate cross-sectional views as well as three-dimensional images of internal organs and structures."[2]
1973 "John Venables and CJ Harland observe electron backscatter patterns (EBSP) in the scanning electron microscope. EBSP provide quantitative microstructural information about the crystallographic nature of metals, minerals, semiconductors and ceramics."[2]
1978 Thomas and Christoph Cremer design a laser scanning process which scans an object using a focused laser beam and creates the over-all picture by electronic means similar to those used in scanning electron microscopes.[43][2]
1981 German physicist Gerd Binnig and Swiss physicist Heinrich Rohrer develop the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level.[44] The STM ‘sees’ by measuring interactions between atoms, rather than by using light or electrons. It can visualise individual atoms within materials.[2]
1981 "1981: 3-D specimen images possible with the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer."[2]
1986 "The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded jointly to Ernst Ruska (for his work on the electron microscope) and to Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (for the scanning tunnelling microscope)."[2]
1986 "Gerd Binnig, Quate, and Gerber invent the Atomic force microscope (AFM)"
1988 "Alfred Cerezo, Terence Godfrey, and George D. W. Smith applied a position-sensitive detector to the atom probe, making it able to resolve materials in 3-dimensions with near-atomic resolution."
1988 "Kingo Itaya invents the Electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopeKingo Itaya invents the Electrochemical scanning tunneling microscope"
1991 The Kelvin probe force microscope is invented.[45][46][47]
1991 Japanese physicist Sumio Iijima discovers the presence of carbon nanotubes in soot produced by vaporization of carbon in an electric arc. The finding would spark interest in carbon nanostructures and their applications.[31] Japan
1992 "Douglas Prasher reports the cloning of GFP. This opens the way to widespread use of GFP and its derivatives as labels for fluorescence microscopy (particularly confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy)."[2]
1993–1996 "Stefan Hell pioneers a new optical microscope technology that allows the capture of images with a higher resolution than was previously thought possible. This results in a wide array of high-resolution optical methodologies, collectively termed super-resolution microscopy."[2]
2010 "Researchers at UCLA use a cryoelectron microscope to see the atoms of a virus."[2]
2014 "Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which allows microscopes to now ‘see’ matter smaller than 0.2 micrometres."[2]

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References

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