The document discusses colony counters, which are instruments used to count bacterial colonies growing on agar plates. Early colony counters involved manually marking colonies on plates placed on a lighted surface and counting by hand. More recent automatic colony counters can electronically identify and count colonies by detecting contrasting light and dark spots, and are connected to computers to further analyze and magnify individual colonies. The recent colony counters provide faster, easier, and more efficient counting and observation compared to older manual methods.