The microscope: its history, construction, and application : being a familiar introduction to the use of the instrument and the study of microscopical sciences / by Jabez Hogg.

  • Hogg, Jabez, 1817-1899.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The microscope: its history, construction, and application : being a familiar introduction to the use of the instrument and the study of microscopical sciences / by Jabez Hogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    one peraon having made the same invention nearly simul- taneously, without any communication from one to the other. In 1685 Stelluti published a description of the parts of a bee, which he had examined with a microscope. The history of the microscope, like that of nations and arts, has had its brilliant periods, in which it slioue with uncommon splendour, and was cultivated with extraordi- nary ardour 3 and these have been succeeded by inteiwals marked with no discovery, and in w'hich the science seemed to fade away, or at least to lie dormant, till some favour- able circumstance—the discovery of a new object, or some new improvement in the instruments of obseiwation— awakened the attention of the curious, and reanimated their researches. Thus, soon after the invention of the microscope, the field it presented to observation was culti- vated by men of the first rank in science, who enriched almost every branch of natui’al history by the discoveries they made by means of this instrument. The Single, or Simple Microscope.—We shall first speak of the single microscope, that having been invented and used long before the double or compound microscope. When the lenses of the single microscope are very convex, and consequently the magnifying power gi’eat, the field of view is small; and it is so difficult to adjust with accmracy their focal distance, that it requires some practice to render the use of them familiar. It was with an instrument of this kind that Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam, Lyonet and Ellis, examined the invisible forms of nature, and by their example stimulated others to the same pursuit. About the year 1665, small glass globules began to bo occasionally applied to the single microscope, instead of convex lenses 3 and by these globules an immense magni- fying power was obtained. Their invention has been generally attributed to IM. Hartsoeker 3 though it appears that we are really indebted to the celebrated Dr. Hooke for this discoveiy, for he described the manner of making them in the preface to his Micrographia Illustrata, pub- lished in tho year 1656. Ml’, Stephen Gray^ having observed some irregular particles within a glass globule, and finding that they ^1) Philosophical Transactions, 1696.