Compound Microscope

A compound microscope, unlike a simple one, makes use of several lenses located in an objective (O) and an eyepiece (E). The first one was built in the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century, and its mechanics were improved in many ways during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is only in the early nineteenth century that the quality of the optical components began to make significant progress.

The caption reads in the original French: Microscope composé.