1676
Out now · film 1 of 13Delft, Dutch Republic
Little Animals in the Rain
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723)
The single-lens microscope · Microbiology
Learn · try itHow the single-lens microscope works
The problem
Nobody had ever seen a living thing too small for the eye. A drop of rain looked like nothing at all.
The idea
A cloth merchant ground a tiny bead of glass, set it in a little brass plate and held it close to his eye. One lens, no tube, but it made a raindrop's world look hundreds of times bigger.
Try it · Magnify a raindrop
Drag the slider to magnify a drop of rain water, the way Leeuwenhoek's single lens did, and watch for what lives in it.
A raindrop, about as your eye sees it: clear water and nothing inside.
Today
Microscopes are how a hospital lab finds the germ behind an infection and picks the medicine that will beat it.
Did you know?
His letter of 9 October 1676 to the Royal Society in London described 'little animals' swimming in rain water: the first written account of bacteria. Robert Hooke, the Society's Curator of Experiments, saw them for himself in November 1677.
