EMTS Centennial Exhibit: Gallery: Microscopes

Microscopes

Even educational technology folks tend to forget about microscopes when thinking about "ed tech," however in the health sciences we cannot afford to forget that this was certainly the first technological tool to profoundly impact on teaching. This is certainly true in the health sciences, and most likely in other disciplines as well. While originally microscopes were large clumsy inefficient affairs, like most technologies we have know, they became smaller, less expensive, and more effective over time. As that process occurred, they became increasingly useful in education as students could buy their own microscopes and bring them with them to classes. Microscopes are also a marvelous example of another phemomena in educational technology -- the technology that just wouldn't die. When a technology meets an informational or educational need elegantly and effectively, and is portable and flexible, it becomes very difficult to replace, even as newer technologies come on the market and compete for more specialized niches. Microscopes do one particular thing very very well, and as such are even today still being used in education. A true success story.

Detail from a Box for Transporting Glass Microscope Slides		A Smith & Beck universal microscope, ca.1865
Microscope reputedly made for Robert Hooke by Christopher Cock, ca.1678	R & J Beck (London), ca.1852 Early inexpensive binocular microscope
Monocular Microscope by Eustachio Divini (Italy), ca.1668	G. V. Black's personal microscope, made by Edmund Hartnack, ca.1860	A Compound Microscope, ca.1670
	Glass Microscope Slide showing Histological Specimen of Cells from the Lip

NOTE: Pictures on this page provided by Sylvia Nicholas, captions from an article by Ron Sims in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Library Notes from the Galter Health Sciences Library.