Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist and tradesman (1632–1723), was inspired to make and use them by a best-selling book, Micrographia, produced in 1665 by English scientist Robert Hooke (1635–1703).

Hooke's method also produced ball-shaped lenses free of the contaminations that marred earlier glass-blowing methods van Leeuwenhoek said he had experimented with and found wanting.

Hooke had previously described, in 1678, a simple technique to make such beads by melting the end of a glass needle — but it was Van Leeuwenhoek’s unrivalled craftsmanship that honed this ...

Henry Baker drew this illustration of van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes in 1756. 1683: Anton van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to Britain's Royal Society describing the "animalcules" he observed under ...