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Dec 3, 710
Nimrud Lens
The Nimrud lens is a piece of rock crystal that was unearthed in an Assyrian palace in modern-day Iraq. It may have been used as a magnifying glass or as a burning glass used to start fires by concentrating sunlight. -
Jan 1, 1000
Reading Stone
The first visual aid is invented. It is called the Reading Stone. It is a glass sphere which you could put on top of a piece of text to magnify it. this helps with reading. -
Dec 3, 1021
Book of Optics
The Book of Optics is a book written by a guy of the name "Ibn al-Haytham" who was a Muslim Scholar. It eventually transforms how light and vision are understood. -
Dec 3, 1248
First Eye glasses
The first wearable eye glasses were invented by "Salvino D'Armate'. -
First Microscope
Two guys, Zacharias Janssen and his son Hans, had invented the first microscope by placing multiple lenses into a tube. this was a forerunner for the compound microscope and the telescope. -
Compound microscope
The first compound microscope was invented by Galileo Galilei. it is created with a convex and concave lens. -
First use of the term 'Microscope'
Giovanni Faber gave the name 'Microscope' to Galileo's invention of the compound microscope. -
First use of the term "Cells"
A magazine called micrographia was published by an English Physicist by the name of Robert Hooke. In this magazine he uses the term "cells" to describe tissue. -
Living cells first seen
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is the first man to see dells and bacteria in action. He used a homemade microscope with one lens and also invented new methods for making lenses, allowing the user to magnify up to 270 times. -
Transmission electron microscope (TEM)
The first TEM was invented by two people by the names of Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll. The TEM relies on electrons to magnify, not light. Modern TEM's can look at objects the diametre of an Atom. -
First CAT scanner
Two chaps by the names of Godfrey Hounsfield and Allan Cormack develop the first "computerised axial tomography" scanner. What it does is combine heaps of X-ray images to create a 3D view of internal organs and structures. -
Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM)
The STM 'sees' by measuring interactions between atoms. It can view individual atoms in different materials. -
Nobel Prize for Microscopy
Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer jointley got awarded the Nobel Prize. Ernst Ruska for his work on the electron microscope, and Gerd and Heinrich for creating the STM. -
Atoms of a virus seen
The Atoms of a virus were first seen at UCLA using a cryoelectron microscope. -
Chemistry Nobel Prize for super microscopes
Eric Betzig, Stefan Hall and William Moerner were all awarded the Nobel Prize for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which allows microscopes to now 'see' matter smaller than 0.2 micrometres.
