In the 17th century, Anton van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke developed the light microscope. In 1676, using this microscope, Leeuwenhoek was the first person to see bacteria. He called them "animalcules" and published his observations in a series of letters to the Royal Society. The name "bacterium" was introduced much later, by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1838.
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