Information on the definition of the microscope.
Definition of a Microscope
As the word itself indicates, a microscope is an optical instrument with which one can see small things, often so small that the unaided eye could not see them at all. It is from two Greek words: mikros, small, and skopein, to see. The word was compounded and given a Latin form by Giovanni Faber of the Academy of the Lincei, as shown by a letter of his to Cesi, President of the Lyceum, dated April 13, 1625. Faber says: "As I also mention his (Galileo's) new occhiale to look at small things and call it Microscopium" Jour. Royal Microscopical Society, 1889, p. 578; Carpenter-Dallinger, p. 125. The microscope serves its purpose by increasing the visual angle. This may be done in two ways:
(1) by means of one or more lenses used as a kind of spectacle by which the eye is enabled to form a sharp image on the retina when optically so close to the object that without the artificial aid a sharp image could not be produced.
(2) The second way of increasing the visual angle is by means of a projection microscope, which, wholly independent of the eye, produces a sharp, greatly enlarged image of the object upon a white surface or other screen. The eye then looks at this image as though it were the object itself and of that size. The fundamental difference in the two forms of microscope is that in the first the image is formed in the eye by rays directly from the microscope, in the second by rays from the screen.
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