t t a single bit of any of us—not somucray molecule—t  of us nine years ago. It may not feel like it, but at ters.

    t person to describe a cell   encounteredsquabbling on over credit for tion of ty-eigician anda dab  making ingenious and useful instruments—but not er admiration tions ofMiniature Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, produced in 1665. It revealed to an encedpublic a universe of t ructuredto imagining.

    Among tures first identified by tle cst ed t aone-incain 1,259,712,000 of tiny cappearance of sucime ion or so, but   ecions of ty times, making t eentury optical technology.

    So it came as somet a decade later y began to receive dras from an unlettered linendraper in ions of up to 275 times. toni van Leeule formal education and no background inscience, ive and dedicated observer and a technical genius.

    to t is not knoions from simpletle more t iny bubble ofglass embedded in t most of us t really not mucrument for everyexperiment remely secretive about ecimes offer tips to tis improve tions.

    2Over a period of fifty years—beginning, remarkably enougforty— to ty, all ten in Locongue of ations, but simplyts of s on almosteveryt could be usefully examined—bread mold, a bee’s stinger, blood cells, teet, and semen (t ful apologies for ture)—nearly all of which had never been seen microscopically before.

    After ed finding “animalcules” in a sample of pepper er in 1676, ty spent a year  devices Englisectle animals” before finally gett