Telescope

Phoenicians cooking on sand discovered glass around 3500 BCE, but it took about 5,000 years more for glass to be shaped into a lens for the first telescope. A spectacle maker probably assembled the first telescope. Hans Lippershey (c1570-c1619) of Holland is often credited with the invention, but he almost certainly was not the first to make one. Lippershey…

Microbiology

By definition microbiology is a branch of biology that deals with microorganisms and their effects on other living organisms. Microorganisms are organisms that are too small to be seen without a microscope, for example: bacteria, viruses, certain fungi and yeasts.

Microbiology – Highlights of Inventions

1874 – Anton Van Leeuwenhoek built a microscope considered by many as the first practical…

Light Microscope

During that historic period known as the Renaissance, after the “dark” Middle Ages, there occurred the inventions of printing, gunpowder and the mariner’s compass, followed by the discovery of America. Equally remarkable was the invention of the light microscope: an instrument that enables the human eye, by means of a lens or combinations of lenses, to observe enlarged…

Holography

“You can’t predict the future but you can invent it” – Dennis Gabor

Around 1947, Scientist Dennis Gabor developed the theory of holography while working to improve the resolution of an electron microscope.

A holograph is an image made by exposing film to the interference pattern created when two laser light sources shine on an object. Must people think of a…

History of Microscopes

The definition of a microscope: An instrument for viewing objects that are too small to be seen easily by the naked eye.

* Circa 1000AD – The first vision aid was invented (inventor unknown) called a reading stone. It was a glass sphere that magnified when laid on top of reading materials. * Circa 1284 – Italian, Salvino D’Armate is credited…

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Primitive medicine

In the long process of discovering which plants are edible, humans in the Stone Age also identify many which seem to cure ailments or soothe a fever.

Herbal medicine is the earliest scientific tradition in medical practice, and it remains an important part of medicine to this day – in a line descending directly from those distant beginnings. The…