What Is The Purpose Of A Microscope?

A microscope makes a tiny object appear large. The earliest microscope dates back to the renaissance period or the age of enlightenment. Scientific temper was encouraged during this period as opposed to the dark ages, when scientific thinking was tempered down. Also in the past, discoveries and inventions were made without giving a thought to what caused them to happen.

This new age saw many inventions and discoveries and among them was the microscope, which was invented in 1590 by a father and son duo from Netherlands, Johannes and Zacharias Jansen. These optical microscopes were made of a pair of lens held in a small metal tube. These microscopes do not match up to the modern microscopes, but even then, they were of immense help in learning about plants and animals.

 

Francesco Stelluti of Rome drew a microscopical picture of a bee in the year 1630. It was one of the first of its kind. He found that a bee has compound eyes; a most fascinating discovery.

 

In 1663, Robert Hooke, an English scientist and inventor, was the first person to discover cells in a piece of cork. He coined the phrase ‘cells’ in his book called Micrographia.

 

In 1674, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbes in water and caused a commotion. Many did not believe him as he was a school drop out and not a very social human being.

 

Man has taken great strides in conquering the tiny world, with the help of more and more advanced microscopes. Electron microscopes were built in the 1930s, acoustic microscopes in the 1970s and tunneling microscopes in the 1980s.

So, how do we define a microscope? A microscope is an optical instrument that uses either one or more than one lens to magnify the image of a tiny object that usually cannot even be seen with the naked eye. There are two types- optical theory microscopes and scanning probe microscopes.

Did you know that microscopes were first used only in wealthier homes as a form of recreation and only later were used for more serious purposes like the study of blood circulation and bacteria?

 

Microscopes can be successfully used in scientific research- to study human cells, in criminology, geology, to get to know how refrigeration affects food, find the causes of diseases in crops, and in metallurgy. Scientists can also find out, on the basis of the size and shape of the opium pod, seen under a microscope, where it was grown and therefore investigate the source of such illegal drugs. The cause of a person’s death can also be found out with the help of a microscope and finally, it helps in solving the mystery behind how deadly diseases such as malaria are caused. Now isn’t that quite amazing!

 

Most of the microscopes are light microscopes that use high powered lens to bend light rays. At the end of the nineteenth century, scientists discovered that electrons could be used as a light source in microscopes and that allowed even tinier objects to be researched and viewed under the microscope.

You may soon be able to purchase a microscope with a built in camera or a built in computer that allows you to see magnified images of the tiniest of organisms and have automatic focusing as well.