1590 - Dutch spectacle-makers, Hans Janssen and his son Zacharias Janssen, claimed by later writers (Pierre Borel 1620 - 1671 or 1628 - 1689 and Willem Boreel 1591 - 1668) to have invented a compound microscope.
1609 - Galileo Galilei develops an occhiolino or compound microscope with a convex and a concave lens.
1624 - Galileo presents his occhiolino to Prince Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei (in English, The Linceans).
1625 - Giovanni Faber of Bamberg (1574 - 1629) of the Linceans coins the word microscope by analogy with telescope.
1665 - Robert Hooke publishes Micrographia, a collection of biological micrographs. He coins the word cell for the structures he discovers in cork bark.
