Timeline of microscope technology
- 1590 – Dutch spectacle-makers, Hans Janssen and his son Zacharias Janssen, claimed by later writers (Pierre Borel 1620 – 1671 or 1628 – 1689 and Willem Boreel 1591 – 1668) to have invented a compound microscope, but this is disputed.
- 1609 – Galileo Galilei develops an occhiolino or compound microscope with a convex and a concave lens.
- 1612 – Galileo presents occhiolino to Polish king Sigismund III.
- 1619 – Cornelius Drebbel (1572 – 1633) presents, in London, a compound microscope with two convex lenses.
- c.1622 – Drebbel presents his invention in Rome.
- 1624 – Galileo presents his occhiolino to Prince Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei (in English, The Linceans).
- 1625 – Giovanni Faber of Bamberg (1574 – 1629) of the Linceans coins the word microscope by analogy with telescope.
- 1665 – Robert Hooke publishes Micrographia, a collection of biological
micrographs. He coins the word cell for the structures he discovers in cork bark. - 1674 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek invents the simple microscope.
- 1931 – Ernst Ruska builds the first electron microscope.
- 1981 – Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer develops the scanning tunneling microscope.