We often think of a microscope as a large and heavy metal object with milled knobs, wheels, gears, racks, pinions and stainless steel and with complex arrangements of lenses that take an invisible object and reproduce it as a room-sized image through the might of modern technology. Well, yes, that is how we do think of microscopes today. Like motor-cars or video sets or automobiles, a modern microscope has to look impressive if it is to perform its task properly.

Today, typical laboratory microscope is so ingrained in our minds from those television images in sciences documentaries that it is easy to see why people cannot imagine an optical microscope in any other form. The little die-cast and plastic toy microscopes that children have as birthday presents look much the same shape as the full-sized laboratory instrument. There are obvious practical reason for that.
These days, when our laboratories are jam-packed with ultra-sophisticated equipments and automated microscopes are as commonplace as washing machines, we take high magnification for granted. How salutary it is to realize that Leeuwenhoek’s own amateur version could give results that rate so highly that the best modern equipment is only four times more powerful. The performance of modern cameras, modern aircraft, modern telescopes, modern ships, can often be hundreds of times better than their earlier counterparts. Yet today’s optical microscope is only four times better then Leeuwenhoek’s primitive version. What an achievement that was!