[7] Philosophical Transactions, No. 980, No. 458.
[8] Priestley’s History of Optics, p. 220.
About the year 1665, small glass globules began to be occasionally applied to the single microscope, instead of convex lenses. By these globules, an immense magnifying power is obtained. The invention of them has been generally attributed to M. Hartsoeker; it appears, however, to me, that we are indebted to the celebrated Dr. Hooke for this discovery; for he described the manner of making them in the preface to his “Micrographia,” which was published in the year 1665. Now the first account we have of any microscopical discovery by M. Hartsoeker, was that of the spermatic animalculæ, made by him when he was eighteen years old; which brings us down to the year 1674, long after Dr. Hooke’s publication.
As these glass globules have been very useful in the hands of experienced observers, I shall lay before my readers the different modes which have been described for making them, that the reader may be enabled thereby to ascertain the reality of the discoveries that have been said to be made with them.
Take a small rod[9] of the clearest and cleanest glass you can procure, free, if possible from blebs, veins, or sandy particles; then by melting it in a lamp with spirit of wine, or the purest and clearest sallad oil, draw it out into exceeding fine and small threads; take a small piece of these threads, and melt the end thereof in the same flame, till you perceive it run into a small drop, or globule, of the desired size; let this globule cool, then fix it upon a thin plate of brass or silver, so that the middle of it may be directly over the center of a very small hole made in this plate, turning it till it is fixed by the before-mentioned thread of glass. When the plate is properly fixed to your microscope, and the object adjusted to the focal distance of the globule, you will perceive the object distinctly and immensely magnified. “By these means,” says Dr. Hooke, “I have been able to distinguish the particles of bodies not only a million times smaller than a visible point, but even to make those visible whereof a million of millions would hardly make up the bulk of the smallest visible grain of sand; so prodigiously do these exceeding small globules enlarge our prospect into the more hidden recesses of nature.”