MICROSCOPIO

The microscope was invented around 1590, and suddenly we saw a new world of living things in our water, in our food and under our nose.

It is unclear who invented the first microscope.

Some historians say it was Hans Lippershey, most famous for filing the first patent for a telescope. Other evidence points to Hans and Zacharias Janssen, a father-son team of living in the same town as Lippershey.

Janssen or Lippershey?

Hans Lippershey was a Dutch spectacle-maker. He was born in Wesel, Germany in 1570, but moved to Holland, which was then enjoying a period of innovation in art and science called the Dutch Golden Age. Lippershey settled in a town called Middelburg, where he made spectacles, binoculars and some of the earliest microscopes and telescopes.

Also from the same town Middelburg, were Hans and Zacharias Janssen (father and son). Both were also Dutch spectacle-makers at same time during the 1590s.

Historians attribute the invention of the microscope to the Janssens, thanks to letters by the Dutch diplomat William Boreel.

In the 1650s, Boreel wrote a letter to the physician of the French king in which he described the microscope. In his letter, Boreel said Zacharias Janssen started writing to him about a microscope in the early 1590s, although Boreel only saw it years later.

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