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Short answer: Zacharias Jansen

Long answer: Your question is not valid for 2 reasons:

1. You cannot "discover" something if it does not exist. You should be asking who invented it, not who found it laying around somewhere.

2. A "simple microscope" is not common terminology. Simple compared to an electron microscope? or simple compared to a compound microscope?

What is typically referred to as just "microscope" is technically a compound microscope. A set of multiple lenses mounted in a desktop style that allows the compounding of magnification.

A compound microscope is the standard microscope in any basic lab setting.

Anything more "simple" than a compound microscope would not even really be a microscope, it would either be a telescope, or simpler than that is a magnifying glass (with a single lens)

The inventor of the magnifying glass was: Roger Bacon

The next step up is the telescope invented by: Zacharias Jansen

The next step up is the "compound microscope" which was also invented by: Zacharias Jansen (this is the simplest form of what would be recognized as or named "microscope")

If you wanted to go even "simpler" and define microscope as anything that magnifies, there were reading glasses around for thousands of years prior, and even "reading stones" which were lumps of polished glass used to magnify parchment in Egypt as far back as 7000 B.C. (inventor unknown).

So it really depends on how you wish to refine your meaning of simple. The magnification of anything? There is no known inventor for reading stones, his name is lost to time. Or if you mean the first invented microscope that could examine things too small for a human eye to detect, that's a compound microscope.

Thus if I am guessing your meaning correctly, you meant to ask this question:

Question: Who invented the compound microscope?

Answer: Zacharias Jansen

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12y ago

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