The primary image for each scope is a Quicktime VR image. These "vitual objects" can be rotated left and right by clicking and dragging your courser across the image, or doing a double finger drag across your track pad. Some of the images have multiple layers if you drag up or down while in the image.

These images do require the Apple Quicktime plug in.

Make your own Leeuwenhoek Microscope:
Professor Keeling at the University of British Columbia has a great document describing how to make your own Leeuwenhoek microscope. I have done this activity with teachers and Parent Coordinators and it is wonderful! I prefabricated the lenses and demonstrated that part, then the workshop participants did the rest. http://www.botany.ubc.ca/keeling/resources.html

Web resources on microscopes and microscopy

Robert Hooke's Micrographia
The Gutenberg Project
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm
Available in various formats from html to Kindle description of Hooke's lens making on page... I found the following text fun since it seems to describe the approach that Leeuwenhoek used to later make his microscopes:

"But when ever I had occasion to examine the small parts of a Body more accurately, I took out the middle Glass, and only made use of one Eye Glass with the Object Glass, for always the fewer the Refractions are, the more bright and clear the Object appears. And therefore 'tis not to be doubted, but could we make a Microscope to have one only refraction, it would, cæteris paribus, far excel any other that had a greater number. And hence it is, that if you take a very clear piece of a broken Venice Glass, and in a Lamp draw it out into very small hairs or threads, then holding the ends of these threads in the flame, till they melt and run into a small round Globul, or drop, which will hang at the end of the thread; and if further you stick several of these upon the end of a stick with a little sealing Wax, so as that the threads stand upwards, and then on a Whetstone first grind off a good part of them, and afterward on a smooth Metal plate, with a little Tripoly, rub them till they come to be very smooth; if one of these be fixt with a little soft Wax against a small needle hole, prick'd through a thin Plate of Brass, Lead, Pewter, or any other Metal, and an Object, plac'd very near, be look'd at through it, it will both magnifie and make some Objects more distinct then any of the great Microscopes."

Leeuwenhoek:
Lens on Leeuwenhoek
Nice history and short video (various resolutions)