Leeuwenhoek Microscope (replica)
notes: label: Description
content: Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek (1635-1723) was a Dutch tradesman who became interested in microscopy while on a visit to London in 1666. Returning home, he began making simple microscopes of the sort that Robert Hooke had described in his, <i>Micrographia</i>, and using them to discover objects invisible to the naked eye.
label: Description
content: In 1886, John Mayall, a prominent English microscopist, made drawings of an original Leeuwenhoek microscope that belonged to the Zoological Laboratories at the University of Utrecht, and that a Dutch professor had brought to London. Replicas followed soon thereafter. The Smithsonian’s example is a replica of a Mayall replica.
label: Description
content: This microscope is attached to a glass tube suitable for holding an aquatic creature. Leeuwenhoek described an apparatus of this sort in a letter that he wrote to the Royal Society of London in January 1689, explaining that he had used it to view the circulation of blood in the tail of an eel; this letter was printed in Dutch and Latin, but not in the <i>Philosophical Transactions</i>. And he probably used a similar set-up in 1698 when he demonstrated this phenomenon to Peter the Great, the Russian Tsar then passing by his home in Delft.
label: Description
content: Ref: J. Mayall, “Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopes,” <i>Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society</i> 6 (1886): 1047-1049.
label: Description
content: J. van Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” <i>Journal of Microscopy</i> 121 (1981): 309-328.
label: Description
content: Clifford Dobell, <i>Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals”</i> (New York, 1958), pp. 55-56, 332-333.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
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content: Microscopes
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content: Science & Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mr. Frederik J. Spruyt
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MG.298222.01
label: catalog number
content: M-14602
label: catalog number
content: 298222.01
label: accession number
content: 298222
objectType: label: Object Name
content: microscope
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 1/4 in x 2 in x 6 1/8 in; 3.175 cm x 5.08 cm x 15.5575 cm