The Microscope

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2013

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the development of the microscope, an instrument which has revolutionised our knowledge of the world and the organisms that inhabit it. In the seventeenth century the pioneering work of two scientists, the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke in England, revealed the teeming microscopic world that exists at scales beyond the capabilities of the naked eye.

The microscope became an essential component of scientific enquiry by the nineteenth century, but in the 1930s a German physicist, Ernst Ruska, discovered that by using a beam of electrons he could view structures much tinier than was possible using visible light. Today light and electron microscopy are among the most powerful tools at the disposal of modern science, and new techniques are still being developed.

With:

Jim Bennett Visiting Keeper at the Science Museum in London

Sir Colin Humphreys Professor of Materials Science and Director of Research at the University of Cambridge

Michelle Peckham Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Leeds

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:38.7	For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co. UK slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy
0:45.9	the program. Hello one afternoon in January 1665 Samuel Peeps visited his favourite bookshop and on impulse
0:54.4	bought a volume that took his fancy. On his way home he stopped off at the butcher
0:58.2	for a hare's foot to treat his colic. The following day he wrote in his diary,
1:02.2	before I went to bed I sat up till two o'clock in my chamber reading Mr Hook's
1:07.2	microscopial observations, the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life.
1:11.6	This work by Robert Hook is commonly known as
1:14.2	the micrographia. It's the earliest book in English containing detailed
1:17.9	observations and drawings made making use a new and revolution use of
1:22.2	scientific instruments of the scientific instruments, the scientific instrument, the microscope.
1:26.0	Invented around the turn of the 17th century, the microscope has transformed our understanding of the natural world,
1:31.0	making it possible to examine objects far too small to be seen by the naked eye.
1:35.4	In the last hundred years the development of the electron microscope and other discoveries have made it possible to see structures as small as a single atom.
1:43.5	We need to discuss the history and application of the microscope.
1:46.9	Jim Bennett, visiting keeper at the Science Museum in London.
	...

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