This is a replica of van Leeuwenhoek microscope.
Look how simple it is.
It's just a piece of brass, and it's got one tiny hole
with the lens in it, which is maybe a millimeter across.
Yet this is the gadget that transformed
the way we see the world.
A tiny lens yet
more powerful than any other.
Van Leeuwenhoek knew that it's
the curvature of a lens that bends the light passing through it.
So making the object being observed here is a fully a pair larger.
And because Van Leeuwenhoek was a master craftsman,
he could curve the lens more than anybody else.
Almost to the point, it was spherical.
This allowed him to magnify objects
up to 500 times.
No one would make
a more powerful microscope for over a century.
So he now had the technology.
But what did he look at?
He went from linen to fleas to the sting of a bumblebee
and pretty much anything he could get his hands on.
And one of the things he looked at was water.
He noticed in a lake near Delft
the water change color with the seasons, and he figured there might be something
in the water that he could discover.
Many of the fundamental breakthroughs
of science seem so simple, so absurdly simple.
But we shouldn't forget that until Van Leeuwenhoek
no one had the curiosity to find out what might be lurking
in the water.
He raced home to take a closer
look with his microscope.
The man who's going to help me study the water is Hans Loncar.
He keeps the spirit of Van Leeuwenhoek alive
by making replicas of his microscopes
to grind a lens.
Hans needs no special glass, just a shard from an old jam jar.
Will do.
The only way to get enough curvature in a lens
is to make it tiny.
This was Van Leeuwenhoek secret,
and it requires great skill and patience.
Van Leeuwenhoek built a staggering 247 microscopes, a new one
every couple of months for over 50 years,
and told nobody how he made them.
We've placed a drop of my lake water
onto a slide that slots into the device.
With a bit of luck, I'll be able to see what van
Lay will look so
now I've looked down a fair few microscopes in my time.
And this is nothing like anything I've used before.
It's fiendishly difficult to use.
I've got hands with me just in case I can't see a thing.
So what do I actually do?
Where am I looking at? Alongside.
You must look through this hole. Yep.
A very tiny hole.
And there's a lens in it. Yes.
And the lens, The sort of, as you see, the sample.
The sample that is put between the glass.
So if I hold it up to the light like this, close to your eyes.
And I can see.
I can see green.
There is a focus.
You know there's a focus. Yes, there is a focus.
You know, this might be me so I can move it actually away.
Away from my eye.
This one. This is me trying to help.
It's so simple, and it works so well.
Yeah, that works.
It really works.
It's now in focus.
wow.
my God.
You can actually see moving
creatures. Yes.
that's incredible.
There's a tiny, tiny bug in there