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Brian J Ford, Living Images from the Birth of Microscopy, Microscopy Today, Volume 22, Issue 4, 1 July 2014, Pages 18–23, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1551929514000583
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Extract
Introduction
Microscopes are probably used in more branches of scientific research than any comparable instrument, and the light microscope has become an instantly recognizable icon. Curiously, this single instrument is widely misrepresented; the story of its development has for decades been misleading, and the general understanding of microscopy is weak. Worse, the media have done a great disservice to the instruments in general—they are poorly portrayed, wrongly interpreted, and both print and broadcast media have failed to do justice to the all-important role that the microscope has played in the advancement of our understanding.
Ask yourself: when did you last see a worthwhile presentation of microscopic images on television or in a magazine? The chances are it was a considerable time ago. Similarly, when did you see a successful film of what the pioneering microscopists could see with their diminutive instruments? This is easier to answer: never. There have been occasional attempts to recreate the images from the dawn of microscopy, but none has been successful. The standard works always emphasized the crude nature of early microscopes and the distorted and chromatic images that their inferior lenses could generate, and this has been perpetuated by recent television documentaries.
