Microscopy is the study of items using a microscope, a device designed to make small things appear larger.

There are several different forms of microscope available to the researcher in a modern laboratory but all owe their origin to the microscopes that used optical lenses to enlarge objects. The first record we have of an artificial lens being used for magnefication dates from 1267. Roger Bacon's work Perspectiva described viewing minute objects through a lesser segment of a sphere of glass or crystal to enlarge them. Spectacles were in use shortly after this period to correct vision and enlarge objects, but it was not until 1595 that the first device that could truly be considered a microscope was made. This microscope was prepared by Zacharias Jansen (1580-c.1638) in Holland. This was the first compound microscope in that it employed two separate lenses that could be moved relative to each other...