Editing Microscope (section)

===Rise of modern light microscopes===
[[File:Gutteridge Microscope HAGAM.jpg|thumb|286x286px|A stand microscope created by [[Joseph Gutteridge]] in the 1860s, held in the collection of the [[Herbert Art Gallery and Museum]]]]
The first detailed account of the [[histology|microscopic anatomy]] of organic tissue based on the use of a microscope did not appear until 1644, in Giambattista Odierna's ''L'occhio della mosca'', or ''The Fly's Eye''.<ref name="Wootton">{{cite book |author=Wootton, David |title=Bad medicine: doctors doing harm since Hippocrates |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford [Oxfordshire] |year=2006 |page=110|isbn=978-0-19-280355-9 }}{{page needed|date=November 2013}}</ref>

The microscope was still largely a novelty until the 1660s and 1670s when naturalists in Italy, the Netherlands and England began using them to study biology. Italian scientist [[Marcello Malpighi]], called the father of [[histology]] by some historians of biology, began his analysis of biological structures with the lungs. The publication in 1665 of [[Robert Hooke]]'s ''[[Micrographia]]'' had a huge impact, largely because of its impressive illustrations. Hooke created tiny lenses of small glass globules made by fusing the ends of threads of spun glass.<ref name="EB1911" /> A significant contribution came from [[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]] who achieved up to 300 times magnification using a simple single lens microscope. He sandwiched a very small glass [[ball lens]] between the holes in two metal plates riveted together, and with an adjustable-by-screws needle attached to mount the specimen.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/early-microscopes-revealed-new-world-tiny-living-things-180958912|title=Early Microscopes Revealed a New World of Tiny Living Things|author=Liz Logan|publisher=Smithsonian.com|date=27 April 2016|access-date=3 June 2016}}</ref> Then, Van Leeuwenhoek re-discovered [[red blood cell]]s (after [[Jan Swammerdam]]) and [[spermatozoon|spermatozoa]], and helped popularise the use of microscopes to view biological ultrastructure. On 9 October 1676, van Leeuwenhoek reported the discovery of micro-organisms.<ref name="Wootton" />

[[File:Binocular compound microscope, Carl Zeiss Jena, 1914 (6779276516).jpg|thumb|Carl Zeiss binocular compound microscope, 1914|upright]]

The performance of a compound light microscope depends on the quality and correct use of the [[Condenser (optics)|condensor]] lens system to focus light on the specimen and the objective lens to capture the light from the specimen and form an image.<ref name="Murphy" /> Early instruments were limited until this principle was fully appreciated and developed from the late 19th to very early 20th century, and until electric lamps were available as light sources. In 1893 [[August Köhler]] developed a key principle of sample illumination, [[Köhler illumination]], which is central to achieving the theoretical limits of resolution for the light microscope. This method of sample illumination produces even lighting and overcomes the limited contrast and resolution imposed by early techniques of sample illumination. Further developments in sample illumination came from the discovery of [[Phase-contrast microscopy|phase contrast]] by [[Frits Zernike]] in 1953, and [[Differential interference contrast microscopy|differential interference contrast]] illumination by [[Georges Nomarski]] in 1955; both of which allow imaging of unstained, transparent samples.