The document discusses the history of the microscope, beginning with Galileo in the early 1600s who built one of the first microscopes and used it to observe things close up. Robert Hooke in the 1660s was the first to observe and illustrate cells by looking at a piece of cork under his microscope. Antony van Leeuwenhoek in the late 1600s and early 1700s made over 500 microscopes and used them to discover bacteria, blood cells, and single-celled organisms, achieving magnifications of up to 270 times.