Microscope Essay

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Unit Title: THE ORGANISATION OF THE BODY Task: 1.1, B) Q) Discuss the major historical events, which led to the birth and the evolution of both the Light and Electron Microscope? History of Light Microscopes It is not clear who invented the microscope but it is said that in Circa 1000AD, an implement called a reading stone was discovered by an unknown inventor, this sphere shaped glass object magnified reading material when placed over it, this then began the birth of the microscope. In 1284 an Italian inventor named Salvino D’Armate was credited for inventing the first pair of wearable spectacles. It wasn’t then till 1590 that things developed with Dutch glassmakers, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans, experimented by placing multiple lenses in tubes, observing objects placed in front of the tubes they realised that the objects appeared massively larger, thus creating both the forerunner of the compound microscope invented about 1595 and the telescope. In 1609 a father of physics and astronomy, Galileo Galilei made a better instrument with a focusing device, by working out the foundations of the lenses after hearing rumours about the Dutch eyeglass makers. In 1674 a man called Antony van Leeuwenhoek made a simple but useful microscope using only one lens to look at other tiny objects such as insects, yeast and to examine blood cells. Antony van Leeuwenhoek back round, to others, he would have been seen as an unpromising candidate to become a scientist of his time, due to him having no fortune, higher education or university degrees, but with his endless curiosity and an open mind he successfully came to make some of the most important findings in biology history, discovering bacteria, protists, sperm cells and many mor... ... middle of paper ... ...entify individual molecules of biological importance. The microscope does suffer from a serious flaw, as no living sample would be able to survive under its extreme vacuum, not being able to show the character of an actual living cell. Ernst Ruska received half a nobel prize in physics in 1986 for his invention, the other half was split between Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig for their invention of the Scanning Tunnel Microscope (STM) enabling scientists to see images in three-dimensional, allowing them to define surface roughness, defects and arrangements of molecules and collections on the surface of the sample. This powerful STM is the strongest microscope to date. http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microscopes.htm http://www.ucmp http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/ruska-bio.htmlberkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html

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