Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index 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. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.