The document traces the history and development of the microscope from its early beginnings in the 1st century AD when Romans looked through glass, through the creation of the first eyeglasses in the 12th century and compound microscope in the 1590s. Key figures who advanced microscopy include Robert Hooke, Anton van Leeuwenhoek who achieved greater magnification in the 1670s enabling the first observations of bacteria, and Max Knott and Ernst Ruska who invented the electron microscope in 1931. The document outlines the development and types of modern microscopes like light, electron, and scanning probe microscopes.