A microscope is an instrument used to examine objects too small to be seen by the naked eye, enabling the science of microscopy. The origin of the compound microscope is genuinely contested rather than owed to one inventor: the earliest known examples appeared among Dutch spectacle makers around 1590 to 1620, with claims made for Zacharias Janssen, his father Hans Martens, Hans Lippershey and Cornelis Drebbel, and no single inventor can be established with confidence. Galileo Galilei later adapted his telescope design after viewing an early microscope, and the Italian naturalist Giovanni Faber coined the word microscopio in 1625 when Galileo presented his own instrument to the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
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YearSourced to the subject's own accountInventor of the compound microscope is genuinely disputed among historians: rival claims name Zacharias Janssen (1590, per his son's later account), Hans Lippershey (who applied for the first telescope patent in 1608), and Cornelis Drebbel (noted with a working example in London in 1619); no single claim is settled. SignificanceSourced to the subject's own accountMade structures invisible to the naked eye observable for the first time, founding the science of microscopy and later enabling the discovery of cells and microorganisms. 1 Microscope
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1. Microscope (Wikipedia)
WikipediaHistory section, paragraph 1, Wikipedia article Microscope
The earliest known examples of compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens near the specimen with an eyepiece to view a real image, appeared in Europe around 1620.
opening definition sentence, Wikipedia article Microscope
A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.
Associated With: Telescope, History section, paragraph 2, Galileo paragraph
Galileo Galilei (also sometimes cited as compound microscope inventor) seems to have found after 1610 that he could close focus his telescope to view small objects and, after seeing a compound microscope built by Drebbel exhibited in Rome in 1624, built his own improved version.
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