Researched
Microscope
Lens-based microscopes revealed that living things are built from tiny units and teem with invisible microbes.
Open in the interactive tree →Dutch lens makers built the first compound microscopes around 1600. In 1665 Robert Hooke published Micrographia and coined the word 'cell' after looking at cork; from about 1674 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used single-lens instruments to see bacteria and protozoa. For the first time life could be studied at a scale invisible to the naked eye.
Prerequisites
- Glassmaking & Glassblowing~50 BCMicroscope lenses need clear, workable glass
- The telescope1608
Unlocks
- Cell theory1838
- Germ theory1861
- Golgi's silver stain1873
- Neuron doctrine1888
- Viruses discovered1892-1898
- Worm connectome1986
- Green fluorescent protein1994