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Essay on the evolution of the microscope
Essay of light microscope
Essay of light microscope
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Birth of the Light Microscope
In Circa 1000AD the first vision aid was invented (the inventor is unknown) it was called a reading stone. It was described as a glass sphere that magnified reading material when placed on top of an object. Someone picked up a piece of transparent crystal thick in the middle than at the edges, they looked through it, and realized it made objects look bigger. “Magnifying glasses” are mentioned during the first century A.D by Roman philosophers Seneca and Pliny the Elder, but never used much until the invention of spectacles, at the end of the 13th century. The earliest microscope was a simple tube with a plate at one end and a lens at the other, which magnified less than ten times its actual size. They were used to view fleas and tiny creepy things and were then dubbed “flea glasses”.
In Circa 1284 the first wearable eye glasses where invented and credited to Italian, Salvino D’Amate. In about 1590, two Dutch spectacle makers, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans discovered while experimenting with the tubes realized that objects appeared greatly enlarged, which ended up the forerunner of the compound microscope and the telescope. In 1609 Galileo, father of modern physics and astronomy, heard of these experiments and figured out the workings of the lenses and made a better device with the ability to focus.
Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703)
Robert Hooke is thought as one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. He of amongst other things, the originator of the word ‘cell’ in biology. English physicist looked at a silver of cork through a microscope lens and noticed some “pores” or “cells” in it. He believed the cells had served as containers for the “noble juices” or “fibrou...
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...In this microscope the electrons are speeded up in a vacuum until the wavelength is only one hundred thousandth that of white light. The beams of these fast moving electrons are focused on a cell sample and are absorbed or scattered by the cell’s parts to form an image on an electron sensitive photographic plate. The electron microscope can magnify objects up to 1 million times. Nevertheless, the electron microscope does suffer from a serious setback, no living specimen can survive under its high vacuum, and they cannot show the changing movements that characterize a living cell.
References and citing’s by Mary Bellis – inventors.about.com. accessed 25 Jan 2013
http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microscope.htm
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html
http://www.roberthooke.org.uk/
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/intro/histo.html
The book draws its name from the first essay, "The Lives of a Cell," in which Thomas offers his observations on ecology and the role of cellular activity. He writes that the "uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing then its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled" (3).
Smithsonian. This 1,600 Year Old Goblet Show the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers. n.d. Web. 2 May 2014.
He invented gadgets as simple as the log arm, which was simply a wooden pole with a type of “hand” at the end to grasp books on high shelves, to the odometer, which measured the revolutions of the wheel on his carriage so he could calculate the distance between places. He also developed the Franklin Stove, which radiated more heat than traditional fireplaces while using less fuel, producing less smoke, and radiating heat long after the fire went out thanks to its metal-lined walls. He made the first flexible urinary catheter for his brother, who suffered from kidney stones and the first bifocals. He made the bifocal by “spitting” the lens frame into two half-circle shapes. Then he would install lenses for reading on the bottom half and lenses for seeing things that were far away on the top
Antoni and Hook were known for the development of the microscope. Before Antoni improved the microscope, the microscope could only magnify objects 20 or 30 times their natural size. Antoni, a Dutch lens-maker, learned to grind a lens that magnified over 200 times. One of Antoni’s inspirations came from a publication by Robert Hooke’s book Micrographia. In this book the term cell was used to describe the basic unit of a structure in plants and animal life. Hooker wrote about his observations through various lenses. Newton was the most important figure in the scientific revolution because of his book the Principia. In this publication Newton describes the universe and its guidelines. In this he created the universal law of gravity and its mathematical equation. He demonstrates that every object exerts an attraction to a greater or lesser degree on all objects. The Principia led to the creation of the Royal Society in
One can almost feel the searing penetration of Lewis Thomas’ analytical eye as it descends the narrow barrel of the microscope and explodes onto a scene of vigorous, animated, interactive little cells—cells inescapably engrossed in relaying messages to one another with every bump and bounce; with every brush of the elbow, lick of the stamp, and click of the mouse…
From these painting we jump to 1838 with stereoscope and then the view master in 1839. The stereoscope is a device that showed two side by side images or photos that gave the person using the steroscope a sense of immersion. The stereoscope was created by Charles Wheatstone, but then one year later William Gruber approved upon the idea of
One definition of a microscope is "an optical instrument that uses a lens or a combination of lenses to produce magnified images of objects." Holden Caufield can be symbolized by a microscope and its parts: the field of view, the focus, and the magnifier.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a scientist and was best known for his contributions to microbiology; he received the title of "the Father of Microbiology” and dedicated many years of his life to improve the microscope in order to attain incredible heights of precision of the microscopic lenses. He produced magnifications from up to 275X, with a resolving power of up to 1.4 µm. Moreover, he presented his findings from the material of animals and vegetables in extraordinary detail as well as being the first to observe a glimpse of bacteria that he found in water; the first illustration of the bacteria is demonstrated in a representation by Leeuwenhoek in the 1683 “Philosophical Transactions” publication. In this publication, Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society about his observations of the inside of an old man’s mouth. He found "an unbelievably great company of living animalcules [Latin for ‘little animals’], a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time. The biggest sort... bent their body into curves in going forwards. . . Moreover, the other animalcules were in such enormous numbers, that all the water... seemed to be alive." These were among the first observations on living bacteria ever recorded.
Although telescopes has been around for several hundreds of years, there has been great discrepancy as to who invented it first. Here is one authors opinion. Lippershey was a Dutch spectacle marker during the early 17th century (approximately 1600). He was one of the first who created the "looker" (now called telescope) by placing two pieces of lenses together. The discovery that placing lenses together can magnify images were made by children who took Lippershey's spectacles and looked at a distant church tower.
the bulk to ordinary matter; the volume of an atom is nearly all occupied by the
As Benjamin Franklin grew older, his vision worsened. He became both far-sighted and near-sighted and the constant switching of his glasses frustrated him so much that he decided to solve this problem. He invented a pair of glasses that incorporated both lenses into one frame called bifocals. “Bifocals are a type of prescription eyeglasses designed for people who need both near and farsighted vision correction. Benjamin Franklin developed the first pair of bifocals in August 1784”
The creation of the first wearable pair of eyeglasses is credited to Salvino D'Armate in Italy around the year 1284 (Bellis). Despite numerous improvements made to this original model, the eyeglasses remained an elementary piece of technology that provided the sole form of vision correction at that time. This was the case century after century. Leonardo da Vinci left us with the first sketches and descriptions of contact lenses in 1508 (CLC). The credit for developing the first corneal contact lens is given to Dr. Thomas Young in 1801. He created a one quarter inch long glass tube filled with water which had a microscope lens fitted on the end (Hartstein). It wasn’t until the late 19th century, however, that the first crude, but tolerable pair of contact lenses were introduced (CLC). Since this first medieval pair, the contact lens has been improved upon time after time. From the introduction of using plastics in contact lens production to the soft, gas permeable, daily wear, disposable lens...
In 1609 the telescope was invented and Galileo began making his own lenses for better telescopes and then started looking at the sky. In December and January (1609-1610) it is said that he made more discoveries that changed the world that anyone has made before or since. He wrote a book called the “Starry Messenger”, and said that there were mountains on the moon, the Milky Way was made up of many stars, and there were small bodies in orbit around Jupiter. He used his mathematical skills to calculate the motions of these bodies around Jupiter. In 1610 he started looking at Saturn and discovered the rings, and the phases of Saturn (just like our moon’s phases).
Because cells are the ‘basic unit of life’, the study of cells, cytology, can be considered one of the most important areas of biological research. Almost every day on the evening news, we are told about new discoveries in cell biology, such as cancer research, cloning, and embryology. (https://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0073031216/student_view0/exercise3/the_importance_of_cell_biology.html)
The earliest known telescope was created by Hans Lippershey in 1608. Others have claimed to have made the discovery of telescope but according to documents, he is the earliest who has applied for the patent. The telescope had an convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece.