JSS Round 2
Teacher Support Material
Microscope History
BC
Egyptians used clear crystals to magnify small objects.
1st century AD
Romans used magnifying glass.
13th century
Eye spectacles were being used. The term lens was introduced (after lentils, the
seeds).
16th century
Jansen used compound lenses.
17th century
Galileo improved focusing device.
Van Leeuwenhoek perfected technique with lenses of great curvature, accepted as
inventor of microscope. He described bacteria, yeast, blood cells.
19th century
Achromatic lenses were first used.
Leitz developed the revolving nosepiece.
Fleming first described mitosis.
20th century
Zeiss developed UV microscope.
Knott & Ruska shared Nobel Prize for developing electron microscope.
More recent developments include use of polarised light, video and digitizers but
light microscopes are still basically modelled on Van Leeuwenhoek’s.
Cell background
1665
Hooke coined the term ‘cell’, in his work Macrophagia. Cells in cork oak tissue
reminded him of monks’ cells.
1831
Robert Brown first described a cell nucleus.
1839
Schwann proposed a theory that all living matter is cellular.
1860
Pasteur consolidated this and named it the ‘cell theory’.
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