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Father and son Hans and Zacharias Jensen invent the microscope. However, it is still very primitive, as it can only magnify opaque objects, and even then, can only magnify 20X.
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Robery Hooke, the Secretary of the Royal Society, publishes "Micrographia", which is a collection of 38 copper-plate illustrations of objects seen under a microscope.
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Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, who was not formally trained with the workings of the microscope, discovers some of the most important elements of microbiology. He discovers bacteria, sperm cells, blood cells, and more.
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Leeuwenhoek reports to the Royal Society of his discovery of "little animals", which are today identified as bacteria and protozoa.
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Harmanus van Deyl begins creating achromatic lenses for microscopes, greatly improving their quality.
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Matthias Jakob Schleiden discovers that all plants are made of cells. Later, with Theodor Schwann, they propose that all life is made of cells.
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Aided by Matthias Jakob Schleiden, Theodor Schwann publishes his findings, and concludes that all plants and animals are made up of cells.
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Rudolf Virchow proposes that cells do not randomly generate, but are created from other cells. His theory is later proven by Louis Pasteur.
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Louis Pasteur proves that cells come from other cells with his famous broth-boiling experiment. This contradicts the common theme of spontaneous generation (life from nowhere) that was believed at the time.
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Ernst Abbe publishes his findings on the microscope. Among these things, he defines the differences between resolution and magnification, criticizing those who use overly powerful eye pieces as having "empty magnification".
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The Ernst Leitz Microscope is patented, with a revolving head (or "turret") for 5 different objectives of focus, one per lens.
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On this date, Walther Flemming discovers mitosis, one of the two ways that cells reproduce.
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August Kohler creates the microscope lamp, allowing for artificial light to be used to view samples, as opposed to natural light via mirrors.
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Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch begin studying microscopic organisms and bacteria during this time.
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This instrument is capable of viewing twice the resolution of visible light microscopes.
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Fritz Zernike creates the Phase Angle Ray Microscope, which uses the phase angles of rays to view the subject. It took until 1941 for a commercial model to be created.
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The first Electron Microscope is created by Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska.
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The first electron micrograph of a biological sample (long-leaved sundew fixed with osmium) is taken.
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Siemens begins supplying the first commercially available electron microscope.
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The first diamond knife is invented. This tool is capable of slicing pieces of organic material as thin as 500 angstroms (10 to the power of -10 meters).
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This device used lasers to view the object in its focus.
