Eventually glass replaced water as the medium, but it is not clear when glass lenses first began to be used. It has been well established that by the seventeenth century Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist, had developed techniques for making high-quality ground lenses for simple microscopes. While these werelimited in power, he used them in combination with both light and his keen eyesight to observe specimens just a few micrometers in size.
The compound microscope, which uses a multiple lens system, was first described in the sixteenth century but had little practical use at that time due to the arrangement of the lenses, the blurring of images from improper grinding, and chromatic aberrations due to problems with light. The first useful compound microscope was constructed in the Netherlands sometime between 1590 and 1608. Three different people, all of the optometrists, have been credited with the invention at one time or another: Hans Jansen, his son Zacharias Jansen, and Hans Lippershey (d. 1619?). It would be over 200 years before these problems were completely resolved, making the compound microscope an important biological tool.
Four microscopists are considered to have influenced the development and use of microscopes in biology and medicine.
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