Biology (Microscope Development)

Ancient History:
The romans first discovered that glass would magnify objects, making it thick in the middle and thin in the edges, but this was not very effective magnifier as it only magnified the object. Seneca discovered that if you place a globe of glass full of water the letters are seen more larger and clearer, based on our in class experiment his hypothesis was correct, as the letters of the newspaper were larger but, In the second part of the experiment were one drop of water was used it appeared clearer than the glass filled with water. Although Seneca’s experiment was a first step to the first microscope the use of glass and water as a form of magnification was not very effective as man could not see bacteria, yeast, blood cells or any animal swimming in drops of water from the naked eye.
Around the 1600 Hans and Zacharias, two spectacle- markers assembled the first compound light microscope. The compound light microscope was made up of 2 lenses inside a tube which enlarged objects 9X. As the microscope model was advanced by Robert Hooke he later discovered cells. Over time the compound light microscope had a magnification of 270X. These advancements made it possible for Robert Brown to discover the nucleus cell making the magnification 1500X more. In 1933 the magnification reached 1millionX their size and resolution as observations of cell structure was seen more clearly thanks to Ernst Ruska’s electron microscope.
As microscopes improved technological advances developed. In the 17th century machines such as microtome and ultra-microtome where developed to ‘slice extremely thin sections for viewing under the microscopes’ as Robert Hooke found that cutting a cork in a thin section gets a clearer view.
As technological advances advanced new techniques also developed over time for example staining techniques. Staining techniques was developed to view and understand tissues under the microscope by using dyes to stain tissue and visualise specimens. Synthetic dyes helped Walther Flemming to identify chromosomes in the cell’s nucleus