Zacharias Jansen and The First Compound Microscope

900 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Earliest microscopes

Compound Microscopes have assisted scientists in the research of objects invisible to the naked eye for more than four hundred years and have greatly influenced our understanding of the world around us. As technology has progressed, Light Microscopy has significantly improved. These improvements include illumination methods, the Resolution lens quality and the use of oil immersion.
The first compound microscope was invented by Zacharias Jansen and his father Hans in 1595. Whilst experimenting with lenses in a tube Zacharias and his father made an important discovery, where the image of and object at the end of the tube seemed greatly enlarged (history-of-the-microscope.org). This microscope was made of two lenses positioned at each end of a compactable tube. As the tube extended the distance between the lenses grew and the image of an object was enlarged. Unlike the modern compound microscope, there were no illumination methods or use of oil immersion and the quality of the lenses were extremely poor.

Illumination
In comparison to the first compound microscope, modern compound microscopes use various illumination methods to produce high-quality images . Objects are capable of being smaller than a wavelength of light and therefore will not be visible through the microscope. However, wavelengths of light in microscopes can be changed so that light can pass through an object and be magnified. Incandescent tungsten filament bulbs are generally used in microscopes and emit wavelengths of light. Longer wavelengths are towards the infrared end of the spectrum and the shorter wavelengths are towards the ultraviolet end of the spectrum.

Spherical aberration is the blurred image of an object due to parallel light rays passing through t...

... middle of paper ...

...e slide and the highest power objective lens is brought down until a "bridge" is created between the objective lens and cover slip. Immersion oil possesses a refractive index close to the refractive index of glass; allowing very little refraction of light rays. Resolution quality can be dramatically improved by the use of immersion oil as it increases the numerical aperture of the objective lens (microscope-microscope.org). Oil immersion eliminates chromatic defects and assists in stopping spherical aberration by producing a partially converged light cone before entering the objective lens. With an object at the aplanatic point ( the focal point and in the centre of the field) of the objective lens, there is no spherical aberration. Oil immersion greatly improves resolution, corrects chromatic defects and stops spherical aberration (microscope-microscope.org).

Show More
Related

  • Peropheral Vision in All Species

    774 Words  | 2 Pages

    The objective of the experiment is to determine whether subjects with hyperopia or myopia have the same degree of lateral peripheral vision. Hyperopia, or farsightedness, occurs if a person’s eyeball is too short for the cornea, or if the cornea has to little curvature so that the light refracting is not focused in the eye correctly. This results in having trouble focusing or concentrating clearly on an object that are near to the person (http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-problems/glossary-of-eye-and-vision-conditions/hyperopia ). Myopia, or nearsightedness, occurs when a person’s eyeball is too long or their cornea is curved too much. This leads to an incorrect refraction of the light and causes blurred vision when focu...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Ammonium Dichromate

    1257 Words  | 3 Pages

    To see a chemical at a microscopic level you would need to use a microscope versus the

    Read More

  • The Study of Myopia and Photorefractive Keratectomy

    2063 Words  | 5 Pages

    For an eye to focus correctly on an object, it must be placed in a certain position in front of the eye. The primary focal point is the point along the optical axis where an object can be placed for parallel rays to come from the lens. The secondary focal point is the point along the optical axis where in coming parallel rays are brought into focus. The primary focal point has the object's image at infinity, where as the secondary focal point has the object at infinity. For people who have myopic eyes, the secondary focal point is anterior to the retina in the vitreous. Thus, the object must be moved forward from infinity, in order to be focused on the retina. The far point is determined by the object's distance where light rays focus on the retina while the eye is not accommodating. The far point in the myopic eye is between the cornea and infinity. The near point is determined by which an object will be in focus on the retina when the eye is accommodating. Thus, moving an object closer will cause the perception of the object to blur. The measurement of these refractive errors are in standard units called diopters (D). A diopter is the reciprocal of a distance of the far point in meters (Vander & Gault, 1998). The myopic condition manipulates these variables in order to ultimately make a nearsighted individual.

    Read More

  • Daguerreotype-Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    Prior to the invention of the daguerreotype, the Camera Obscura was the main optical instrument that was used to project images onto paper. The Camera Obscura was a device in the shape of a box that allowed light, which was being reflected from the images that the user was intending to capture, to enter through an opening at one end of the box to form an image on a surface and an artist would then trace the image to form the most accurate impression of an image at that peri...

    Read More

  • Myopia Argumentative Essay

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    The degree of blurriness is determined by the degree of curvature.

    Read More

  • Valerie Thomas: NASA and her Invention: An Illusion Transmitter

    684 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ossessed with three dimensional attributes. The optical effect may be explained by the fact that the human eyes see an object from two viewpoints separated laterally by about six centimeters. The two views show slightly different spatial relationships between near and near distant objects and the visual process fuses these stereoscopic views to a single three dimensional impression. The same parallax view of an object may be experienced upon reflection of an object seen from a concave mirror." (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4229761.html).

    Read More

  • The Virtual Reality: The History Of Virtual Reality

    1718 Words  | 4 Pages

    From these painting we jump to 1838 with stereoscope and then the view master in 1839. The stereoscope is a device that showed two side by side images or photos that gave the person using the steroscope a sense of immersion. The stereoscope was created by Charles Wheatstone, but then one year later William Gruber approved upon the idea of

    Read More

  • Microscopes and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a scientist and was best known for his contributions to microbiology; he received the title of "the Father of Microbiology” and dedicated many years of his life to improve the microscope in order to attain incredible heights of precision of the microscopic lenses. He produced magnifications from up to 275X, with a resolving power of up to 1.4 µm. Moreover, he presented his findings from the material of animals and vegetables in extraordinary detail as well as being the first to observe a glimpse of bacteria that he found in water; the first illustration of the bacteria is demonstrated in a representation by Leeuwenhoek in the 1683 “Philosophical Transactions” publication. In this publication, Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society about his observations of the inside of an old man’s mouth. He found "an unbelievably great company of living animalcules [Latin for ‘little animals’], a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time. The biggest sort... bent their body into curves in going forwards. . . Moreover, the other animalcules were in such enormous numbers, that all the water... seemed to be alive." These were among the first observations on living bacteria ever recorded.

    Read More

  • Mathematics of Telescopes

    1229 Words  | 3 Pages

    Light rays gather through the opening of the telescope called the aperture and pass through the objective lens and refract onto a single point called the focal point. From there, the light rays continue in the same direction until it hits the eyepiece lens, which also refracts the light back into parallel rays. During the process, the image that enters our eyes is actually reverse of the original image and magnified because of the size in which we perceive the image.

    Read More

  • Field Photos

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this task we had to show our ability to control ‘Depth of Field’ with aperture controls.

    Read More

  • The Evolution of Photography

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    The invention of the camera and its many makeovers has changed the art of photography. The idea for photography came around in 1814 when Joseph Niépce wanted an image of his son before he left for war. He succeeded in making the first camera in 1827, but the camera needed at least eight hours to produce one picture. Parisian Louis Daguerre invented the next kind of camera in 1839, who worked with Niépce for four years. His camera only took fifteen to thirty minutes to produce a picture.

    Read More

  • The Contact Lens

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    The creation of the first wearable pair of eyeglasses is credited to Salvino D'Armate in Italy around the year 1284 (Bellis). Despite numerous improvements made to this original model, the eyeglasses remained an elementary piece of technology that provided the sole form of vision correction at that time. This was the case century after century. Leonardo da Vinci left us with the first sketches and descriptions of contact lenses in 1508 (CLC). The credit for developing the first corneal contact lens is given to Dr. Thomas Young in 1801. He created a one quarter inch long glass tube filled with water which had a microscope lens fitted on the end (Hartstein). It wasn’t until the late 19th century, however, that the first crude, but tolerable pair of contact lenses were introduced (CLC). Since this first medieval pair, the contact lens has been improved upon time after time. From the introduction of using plastics in contact lens production to the soft, gas permeable, daily wear, disposable lens...

    Read More

  • Physics Of Telescopes: An Introduction To Refracting Telescopes

    1806 Words  | 4 Pages

    Due to the nature of a sphere, the light will actually not all be focused exactly towards the focus. Instead, light near the edge of the lens will be focused just before the focal point on the optical axis, and light near the center of the lens will be focused just after the focal point on the optical axis. This produces an image that looks blurry or “out of focus”. The simplest way to prevent spherical aberration is to rather than using a spherical lens, use a parabolic lens. Parabolic lenses have exactly the right shape as to focus the light to a central point. The downside of this is that parabolic lenses are significantly more challenging to make than spherical lenses, so for most cheaper telescopes, other methods are used. Some telescopes eliminate spherical aberration by using two different lenses that have equal, but opposite spherical aberration, so that the aberration cancels itself out and the image appears

    Read More

  • An Essay On The Telescope

    702 Words  | 2 Pages

    The earliest known telescope was created by Hans Lippershey in 1608. Others have claimed to have made the discovery of telescope but according to documents, he is the earliest who has applied for the patent. The telescope had an convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece.

    Read More

  • The Invention Of The Phhonograph

    1637 Words  | 4 Pages

    The very first photograph was made in 1877 and it was mainly made of wood and used tin foil to create the sound. The way that the first phonograph worked was when you cranked the handle and spoke it would create bumps and cresses in the tin foil. When you played back the telegraph will read the bumps and cresses in the foil and it will come out as sound. This fancy item comes with a price, in 1891 the phonograph costed $150. Within a year Tomas Edison will put this invention and put it in dolls so the dolls can talk. With that invention was the telegraph.

    Read More

More about Zacharias Jansen and The First Compound Microscope

Open Document