It is not difficult to fix the period when the microscope first began to be generally known, and was used for the purpose of examining minute objects; for, though we are ignorant of the name of the first inventor, we are acquainted with the names of those who introduced it to the public, and engaged their attention to it, by exhibiting some of its wonderful effects. Zacharias Jansens and his son had made microscopes before the year 1619, for in that year the ingenious Cornelius Drebell brought one, which was made by them, with him into England, and shewed it to William Borel, and others. It is possible, this instrument of Drebell’s was not strictly what is now meant by a microscope, but was rather a kind of microscopic telescope,[4] something similar in principle to that lately described by Mr. Æpinus, in a letter to the Academy of Sciences at Petersburgh. It was formed of a copper tube six feet long and one inch diameter, supported by three brass pillars in the shape of dolphins; these were fixed to a base of ebony, on which the objects to be viewed by the microscope were also placed. In contradiction to this, Fontana, in a work which he published in 1646, says, that he had made microscopes in the year 1618: this may be also very true, without derogating from the merit of the Jansens, for we have many instances in our own times of more than one person having executed the same contrivance, nearly at the same time, without any communication from one to the other.[5] In 1685, Stelluti published a description of the parts of a bee, which he had examined with a microscope.
[4] Vide Borellum de vero Telescopii Inventore.
[5] In 1664 Dr. Power published his “Experimental Philosophy,” the first part of which consists of a variety of microscopical observations; and in the following year Dr. Hooke produced his “Micrographia,” illustrated with a number of elegant figures of the different objects. EDIT.