Many images are closely associated with the 17th-century English experimentalist Robert Hooke: the hugely enlarged flea, the orderly plant units he named "cells," among others. To create them, Hooke used elaborately gold-stamped and turned microscopes such as the one pictured.
Hooke's images, which persist among the most well-known depictions in all of science, appeared along with other natural and fabricated marvels of the microscopic world in Micrographia (1665). The book was an expression of 30-year-old Hooke's life, complex with both remarkable technical skills and careful inquiry. In the massive volume, Hooke initiated the convention of visualization that characterizes science to this day.
Micrographia was the second publication of the young Royal Society, which Hooke had helped to shape. For 40 years, first as an employee, then as a member, he kept the Society's collections and prepared weekly demonstrations at the request of its members, relying on his considerable technical virtuosity ...
