Zacharias janssen biography microscope timeline

For millennia, the smallest thing humans could see was about as wide as a human hair. When the microscope was invented around 1590, suddenly we saw a new world of living things in our water, in our food and under our nose.

But it's unclear who invented the microscope.

Some historians say it was Hans Lippershey, most famous for filing the first patent for a telescope. Other evidence points to Hans and Zacharias Janssen, a father-son team of spectacle makers living in the same town as Lippershey.

Janssen or Lippershey?

Hans Lippershey, also spelled Lipperhey, was born in Wesel, Germany in 1570, but moved to Holland, which was then enjoying a period of innovation in art and science called the Dutch Golden Age.

Lippershey settled in Middelburg, where he made spectacles, binoculars and some of the earliest microscopes and telescopes.

Also living in Middelburg were Hans and Zacharias Janssen. Historians attribute the invention of the microscope to the Ja