Modern optical microscopes are amazingly hi-tech pieces of kit, pushing magnification to the very limits of the resolution permitted by the wavelengths of light, but as with many of the oldest scientific instruments, the first optical microscopes were very much simpler.

This image – reproduced from Wikimedia Commons – is a 19th Century reproduction of the very first (confirmed) compound microscope, which as we saw in our previous post Types of Microscopes was produced by the Dutch lens grinders Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen in the late 16th Century.

Resembling a small telescope (or even a kaleidoscope!) this item offered a greater magnification than the simple hand lenses that preceded it, but it would be well into the 17th Century before the real revolution of microscopy began, thanks to the skilled lens-making of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who is credited as being the father of microbiology.