This is an antique optical microscope which I bought on ebay
for £26.00 + £13.00 p&p (it is very heavy). It still needs quite a bit of restoration, as does its box, but it is beautiful even as it is.
It is difficult to establish who invented the first
microscope. Some sources point to the Netherlands in the late 16th
century, whereas other look to Galileo Galilei, who used an occhiolino (little
eye), which was given the name ‘microscope’ by Giovanni Faber in 1625. The
title of the ‘Father of Microbiology’ however is given to Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch draper, trader and scientist who made and used small
spheres of glass to magnify biological specimens. Van Leeuwenhoek corresponded
with the Royal Society in London, but, after an initial success, the
relationship became awkward, as the Society questioned his discovery of the
previously unknown single celled organisms. A deputation went to Delft to
verify Van Leeuwenhoek’s observation, and with his vindication came an
invitation to become a member of the Royal Society. In the next fifty years Van
Leeuwenhoek sent over five hundred letters to the Society describing his
findings.
Microscopy became popular in England after the publication
of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia in 1665, the world’s first scientific
bestseller. In spite of its age, it remains a fascinating read – digitised version here – and in it Hooke first used the word ‘cell’ in a scientific sense
(the walls of plant cells reminded him of the walls of a monk’s cell). Perhaps
its most famous image is Hooke’s engraving of a flea, a plate which folds out
of his book.
Robert Hooke was a polymath - he has been called England’s Leonardo - who really ought to be
better known. From his youth, Hooke was fascinated by science. Born in 1635,
the teenage Hooke was ‘chemical assistant’ to Dr Thomas Willis in Oxford, where
he met, and became assistant to, Robert Boyle. Through Boyle, Hooke moved in
the highest scientific circle of his day, including Christopher Wren and Isaac
Newton. Hooke was a frail individual, with a pronounced hunchback, and it is
possible that when, in a letter to Hooke in 1676, Newton wrote, “If I have
seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants [sic]," that
he was making a thinly veiled jibe at his rival’s disability. There was no love
lost between Hooke and Newton, and it is said that when Newton became President
of the Royal Society, in a bid to deny posterity, to have destroyed the only
known portrait of Hooke, and to have ‘misplaced’ many of Hooke’s papers in the
Society’s archives. It is highly likely that Hooke’s reputation as an irascible
curmudgeon is a result of a posthumous ‘hatchet job’ by others, as his own
personal accounts show him to be a popular dining companion and steadfast
friend. He was known for his skills as an arbitrator and surveyor, and his
scrupulous honesty. Following the Great Fire of London, in 1666, Hooke was
Surveyor to the City and chief assistant to Wren. He was the architect of many
famous buildings and collaborated with Wren on St Paul’s Cathedral – the dome
was constructed to Hooke’s conception.
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