Jolly Old St. Nicholas—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2022-‘23

                                                                  Jolly Old St. Nicholas by the Ames Brothers.

This is St. Nicholas Day, a day when children in the Netherlands and across much of Northern Europe awake to find their stockings or shoes filled with candy, nuts, oranges, and small toys left behind in the night by the sanctified Bishop.  It is also still observed in some American families, though the practice seems to be fading.  Our three daughters always found their stockings filled until they were adults.  It is also a good day to trot out Jolly Old St. Nicholas, America’s oldest secular Christmas song—if you discount Jingle Bells which was not intended to be linked to the holiday.

A traditional Catholic Feast Day in the West, it celebrates the day Nikolas, the Greek Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor died in 346.  He is one of the most important Saints in the Orthodox tradition as well and is venerated in Greece and especially in Russia where he is the national patron.

                                St. Nicholas in a traditional Byzantine Orthodox icon.

But in the West Nicholas was revered as a patron of children and gradually morphed into the lanky, bearded Bishop in a red miter or cowl dolling out the goodies.  In America he was ultimately transformed into Santa Claus with a workshop full of elves at the North Pole, a jolly cookie baking wife, and a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.  And he makes his rounds on Christmas Eve, not on the Feast of St. Nicholas.  Quite a transformation.

St. Nicholas came to North America with the Dutch settlers of New York and the Hudson Valley.  He was alien to the rest of the colonies, especially in New England which frowned of Christmas and all things smacking of Bishops, Saints, and Popery.

By the post-Revolutionary era he had passed on to English residents of New York.  Washington Irving, who preserved the old Dutch folk tales—and made more than a few up himself—noted that at some point prior to the 1820’s, St. Nicholas had shifted his gift giving to Christmas in areas of the Hudson Valley.

In 1823 a newspaper in Troy, New York published an anonymous poem titled A Visit from St. Nicholas that was later attributed to Clement Clark Moore.  Within years it was being re-printed annually in newspapers across the United States.  In the poem, Moore invented many of the “traditions” associated with St. Nicholas’s visit on Christmas Eve, including his reindeer and sleigh transport and a physical description of the jolly old elf that strips him of his Bishop’s regalia, dresses him in fur, and transforms him from a tall, regal figure to a rotund, bearded little man.

St, Nick from Thomas Mast's 1865 edition of A Visit from Saint Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore.

This new character was called Santa Claus, derived from the Dutch Sinterklass regionally, but remained better known as St. Nicholas through most of the following century.  Thomas Nast’s mid-century cartoons helped define his appearance, including the fur trimmed cap instead of the miter, top hat, or cowl depicted in earlier illustrations.  There was not much agreement on the color of his outfit, which was often pictured as brown fur trimmed in ermine or as green or blue, until the spread of cheap popular color lithography in which artists used the bishop’s red of Europe because it showed up so brilliantly.

Enter Emily Huntington Miller who submitted a poem called Lilly’s Secret to The Little Corporal Magazine in December 1865, just as Nast’s drawings were cementing the new vision of St. Nick and a war weary nation was eager to devote time and love to their families and children. 

Jolly Old St. Nicholas on a tea box circa 1880--not yet our Santa Claus.

In 1867 John Piersol McCaskey, a school principal and former Mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania adapted Miller’s words with a few changes to music.  McCaskey included the song and his songwriting claim in his 1881 book, Franklin Square Song Collection, No. 1 and noted that it had previously been published in 1874 in School Chimes: A New School Music Book compiled by hymnist James Ramsey Murray.  McCaskey, by the way, is a direct ancestor of the ownership of the Chicago Bears.  Make of that what you will.

By the late 19th Century, the song was a parlor piano sing-along favorite and was a staple at the Christmas pageants that were becoming a fixture in public schools.

                                   Santa  Claus by Haddon Sundbloom.

St. Nicholas, St. Nick, and Santa Claus were all commonly used, with St. Nicholas holding the edge until Santa Claus won out sometime around 1930 and popular magazine cover art and commercial art by the likes of Norman Rockwell in the Saturday Evening Post and Haddon Sundblom for Coca Cola firmly fixed the modern image of the gift giver.

The song has been recorded many times beginning with Edison cylinders and early RCA discs.  Among the more notable versions were by Ray Smith in 1949, Chet Atkins in 1961, Eddy Arnold in 1962, The Chipmunks in 1963, Andy Williams in 1995, Anne Murray in 2001, and Carole King in 2017.  Perhaps the most commonly heard version was included in the Ray Conniff Singers 1963 album We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

                            The Ames Brothers in 1955--clockwise from top: Ed, Vic, Joe and Gene.

But today we are listening to a version by the popular quartet the Ames Brothers recorded in 1951 on Coral Records.  Siblings Joe, Gene, Vic, and Ed hailed from Malden, Massachusetts.  Their surname at birth was Urick and they were the sons of Russian Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.  During World War II the three youngest brothers and a cousin entertained at Army and Navy bases then were booked into The Fox and Hounds nightclub, one of the fanciest night clubs in Boston under the name the Amory Brothers. 

As their local post-war popularity grew, older brother Joe joined the group replacing the cousin.  In 1948 they signed with Decca Records in New York but could not record for a year when American Federation of Musicians (AFM) President Joe Petrillo imposed a ban on commercial recordings to improve royalty payments to musicians.  When the ban was lifted, the group, renamed again as the Ames Brothers, was the first act to record on Decca’s new Coral label. 

They were swept into national top billing with their first hit record, Rag Mop, in January 1950.  Over the next 13 years until the group broke up, the Ames Brothers reached the charts 49 times, were featured regulars on Arthur Godfrey’s radio show, and were one of the first acts on Ed Sullivan’s Talk of the Town TV show, and frequent guests on other shows on both media.  After the group broke up Ed Ames went on to even greater fame as a solo artist with hits like Try to Remember from The Fantasticks and portraying sidekick Indian Mingo on Fess Parker’s TV series Daniel Boon.

The version of Jolly Old St. Nicholas features an orchestra directed by Marty Manning. 

 

Jolly Old St. Nicholas—Murfin ’s Carols for Corona and Winter Holiday Music Festival

                                                        Jolly Old St. Nicholas by the Ames Brothers.

This is St. Nicholas Day, a day when children in the Netherlands and across much of Northern Europe awake to find their stockings or shoes filled with candy, nuts, oranges, and small toys left behind in the night by the sanctified Bishop.  It is also still observed in some American families, though the practice seems to be fading.  Our three daughters always found their stockings filled until they were adults.  It is also a good day to trot out Jolly Old St. Nicholas, America’s oldest secular Christmas song—if you discount Jingle Bells which was not intended to be linked to the holiday.

A traditional Catholic Feast Day in the West, it celebrates the day Nikolaos of Myra, the Greek Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor died in 346.  He is one of the most important Saints in the Orthodox tradition as well and is venerated in Greece and especially in Russia where he is the national patron.

                                St. Nicholas in a traditional Byzantine Orthodox icon.

But in the West Nicholas was celebrated as a patron of children and gradually morphed into the lanky, bearded Bishop in a red miter or cowl dolling out the goodies.  In America he was ultimately transformed into Santa Claus with a workshop full of elves at the North Pole, a jolly cookie baking wife, and a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.  And he makes his rounds on Christmas Eve, not on the Feast of St. Nicholas.  Quite a transformation.

St. Nicholas came to North America with the Dutch settlers of New York and the Hudson Valley.  He was alien to the rest of the colonies, especially in New England which frowned of Christmas and all things smacking of Bishops, Saints, and Popery.

By the post-Revolutionary era he had passed on to English residents of New York.  Washington Irving, who preserved the old Dutch folk tales—and made more than a few up himself—noted that at some point prior to the 1820’s, St. Nicholas had shifted his gift giving to Christmas in areas of the Hudson Valley.

In 1823 a newspaper in Troy, New York published an anonymous poem titled A Visit from St. Nicholas that was later attributed to Clement Clark Moore.  Within years it was being re-printed annually in newspapers across the United States.  In the poem, Moore invented many of the “traditions” associated with St. Nicholas’s visit on Christmas Eve, including his reindeer and sleigh transport and a physical description of the jolly old elf that strips him of his Bishop’s regalia, dresses him in fur, and transforms him from a tall, regal figure to a rotund, bearded little man.

This new character was called Santa Claus, derived from the Dutch Sinterklass regionally, but remained better known as St. Nicholas through most of the following century.  Thomas Nast’s mid-century cartoons helped define his appearance, including the fur trimmed cap instead of the miter, top hat, or cowl depicted in earlier illustrations.  There was not much agreement on the color of his outfit, which was often pictured as brown fur trimmed in ermine or as green or blue, until the spread of cheap popular color lithography in which artists used the bishop’s red of Europe because it showed up so brilliantly.

Jolly Old St. Nicholas on a tea box circa 1880--not quite yet our Santa Claus.

Enter Emily Huntington Miller who submitted a poem called Lilly’s Secret to The Little Corporal Magazine in December 1865, just as Nast’s drawings were cementing the new vision of St. Nick and a war weary nation was eager to devote time and love to their families and children. 

In 1867 John Piersol McCaskey, a school principal and former Mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania adapted Miller’s words with a few changes to music.  McCaskey included the song and his songwriting claim in his 1881 book, Franklin Square Song Collection, No. 1 and noted that it had previously been published in 1874 in School Chimes, A New School Music Book compiled by hymnist James Ramsey Murray.  McCaskey, by the way, is a direct ancestor of the Chicago Bears team owners family.  Make of that what you will.

By the late 19th Century the song was a parlor piano sing-along favorite and was a staple at the Christmas pageants that were becoming a fixture in public schools.

                             Santa by Norman Rockwell.

St. Nicholas, St. Nick, and Santa Claus were all commonly used, with St. Nicholas holding the edge until Santa Claus won out sometime around 1930 and popular magazine cover art and commercial art by the likes of Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post and Haddon Sundblom for Coca Cola firmly fixed the modern image of the gift giver.

The song has been recorded many times beginning with Edison cylinders and early RCA discs.  Among the more notable versions were by Ray Smith in 1949, Chet Atkins in 1961, Eddy Arnold in 1962, The Chipmunks in 1963, Andy Williams in 1995, Anne Murray in 2001, and Carole King in 2017.  Perhaps the most commonly heard version was included in the Ray Conniff Singers 1963 album We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

But today we are listening to a version by the popular quartet the Ames Brothers recorded in 1951 on Coral Records.  Siblings Joe, Gene, Vic, and Ed hailed from Malden, Massachusetts.  Their surname at birth was  Urick and they were the sons of  were Russian Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.  During World War II the three youngest brothers and a cousin entertained at Army and Navy bases then were booked into The Fox and Hounds nightclub, one of the fanciest night clubs in Boston under the name the Amory Brothers. 

As their local post-war popularity grew, older brother Joe joined the group replacing the cousin.  In 1948 they signed with Decca Records in New York but could not record for a year when American Federation of Musicians (AFM) President Joe Petrillo imposed a ban on commercial recordings to improve royalty payments to musicians.  When the ban was lifted the group, renamed again as the Ames Brothers, was the first act to record on Decca’s new Coral label. 

                        The Ames Brothers in 1955--clockwise from top: Ed, Vic, Joe and Gene

They were swept into national top billing with their first hit record, Rag Mop, in January 1950.  Over the next 13 years until the group broke up, the Ames Brothers reached the charts 49 times, were featured regulars on Arthur Godfrey’s radio show, and were one of the first acts on Ed Sullivan’s Talk of the Town TV show, and frequent guests on other shows on both media.  After the group broke up Ed Ames went on to even greater fame as a solo artist with hits like Try to Remember from The Fantasticks and portraying side kick Indian Mingo on Fess Parker’s TV series Daniel Boon.

The version of Jolly Old St. Nicholas feature an orchestra directed by Marty Manning. 

A Dutchman, a Gizmo, and Invisible Creatures

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

On September 17, 1683 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London describing animalcules—tiny one celled animals invisible to the naked eye now known as protozoa.  In doing so he inadvertently founded a new branch of science—microbiology.

Leeuwenhoek was an unlikely scientist.  At the time most scientific investigation was the sole providence of gentlemen who had the education, leisure time for investigation, and the fortune to support the cost of their work.  He was neither a gentleman or particularly well educated.    He came from a family of tradesmen or what the English called skilled mechanics.  His father was a basket maker and his mother’s family were brewers.  They were from Delft, a reasonably prosperous small city in the Netherlands province of South Holland.

As a young man Leeuwenhoek became a draper.  He also worked as a surveyor, wine assayer and as a municipal official.  His occupations made him comfortable, if not wealthy and he was a respected member of the community.  He was friends with and almost the exact contemporary of Delft’s most famous resident the painter Johannes Vermeer and was an executor of his estate when the master died in poverty in 1675.

His commercial success allowed Leeuwenhoek the time to pursue his growing interest in science.  An avid reader, he had read Robert Hooke’s illustrated book Micrographia.  Hook was working with primitive compound microscopes using two lenses.  But the technology of he these devises was primitive and could only magnify objects 20 to 30 times.  Around the mid-1660’s he began to grind lenses in an attempt to create more effective instruments.

My high school science text credited Leeuwenhoek as the inventor of the microscope.  As you can see, he was not.  Compound microscopes had been around for nearly 40 years.  His devices had single lenses, but the quality of the lenses was so high that he was able to achieve documented magnification of over 200 times.  And evidence from his detailed observations indicates that some of the devices that he constructed may have neared a power of 500.

One of van Lueeuwenkhoek's deceptively simple but effective microscopes.

Leeuwenhoek’s breakthrough—and a closely guarded secret in his life time—was not discovered until 1957 when scientists discovered that he used finely drawn thread of molten glass to create perfect small spheres which became his lenses.  The small lens would be set in a brass or silver plate in front of which would be a pointed rod on an adjustable screw which would hold the object being studied.  Leeuwenhoek, working in the brightest natural light, would hold the devise close to his eye. 

Leeuwenhoek constructed at least 500 different devices, only a handful of which still survive.  He often crafted new microscopes specifically for the specimens he wished to examine.

A Dutch edition of the book Sequel of the letters written to the widely renowned Royal Society of London. 

He made careful, extraordinarily detailed written observations of what he saw.  These observations are so clear modern scientists can often identify the exact species of microbe he was observing.  Since his drawing skills were poor, he later also hired a professional illustrator to make drawings to be enclosed in his letters to the Royal Society and other scientists.

His correspondence with the Royal Society continued for more than 50 years through his final illnesses.  The Society frequently published his findings translated from Dutch to English or Latin in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the most important scientific journal in the world at the time.

Among his main discoveries were infusoria, the unicellular animals in pond water now mostly classified as protists; bacteria from the human mouth; vacuoles, important structures in the cells of plants, fungi, and some protia; spermatozoa; the banded structure of mussel fiber; and the blood flow in capillaries.

Leeuwenhoek commissioned a professional artist to illustrate many of his observations for the Royal Society including these animalcules.

In his later years Leeuwenhoek was famous.  He was visited by William of Orange and other notables who he let make their own observations with his equipment.  He even presented a microscope to Peter the Great of Russia when he was invited to visit the Tsar’s ship.

Active to the end, he died in Delft in 1723 at the age of 90.

In 1981 Leeuwenhoek’s original specimens, sent to the Royal Society were discovered in a remarkable state of preservation along with many of his hand written notes in Dutch. 

His life and work is a testament to the talent and persistence of a common craftsman. 

How Did a Second Century Bishop Become Santa Claus?

Note:  Adapted from a post on December 6, 2010.

When our children were young, they always found stockings filled on December 2, St. Nicholas Day.  It was a custom in my wife’s Polish family which originated in Prussia where the peasantry was Slavic and the aristocrats German. I’m told that Poles from southern parts of the country are mystified by this.

Today is St. Nicholas Day.  A traditional Catholic Feast Day in the West, it celebrates the day Nikolaos of Myra, the Greek Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor died in 346.  He is one of the most important Saints in the Orthodox tradition as well and is venerated in Greece and especially in Russia where is the national patron.  The bishop was considered a vigorous defender of what became orthodox belief after the Council of Nicaea in 325.  As legend has it, Nicholas actually slapped the Presbyter Arius, the leader of a minority who held a crypto-unitarian theology.

Despite this, Nicholas is best remembered in the west for his kindness to children and his gifts of alms to the poor.

  The major miracle attributed to him, told in many variations, is that he discovered the murder of three children by a butcher who was curing their bodies in a barrel to sell as ham.  Nicholas discovered the ruse, had the villain arrested and then resurrected the innocent children.

Nicholas came from a very wealthy family.  Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by an uncle, also named Nicholas who was Bishop of Patara who raised the boy for the priesthood.  Later the very devout young man began discretely using his wealth to make gifts to the poor.  He supposedly did so anonymously, often by throwing purses of coins over garden walls or through open windows in the dead of night. 

 

The most famous story, also told with many variations, is that he took pity on a poor man with three daughters who could not marry because they had no dowry.  For three nights running, or once a year for three years, or once each girl reached marriageable age depending on the version being told, Nicholas tossed a customary purse of gold into the man’s home.  The third time the man sought to hide himself so that he could thank his benefactor.  Seeing this, Nicholas supposedly tossed the final bag down the chimney, where it dropped into the stocking of the youngest girl who had hung it to dry.  This is the origin of gifts in shoes or stockings associated with Nicholas in later folk lore.

In commemoration of this story, most icons of St. Nicholas show him with three purses tied to his belt, which were often stylized into three golden balls.  In the Netherlands, where so much of the gift giving tradition associated with him became popularized, the three golden balls became associated with oranges, which the Saint would bring with him on his annual visits from Spain.  This part of the legend is associated with the long rule of the Netherlands by the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty.

In an even stranger twist, the three balls morphed into the three balls traditional emblematic of pawn brokers.  St. Nicholas is the patron of these petty money lenders, supposedly because they, like him, are the last resort of the poor.  Nicholas is also venerated as the patron of sailors, children, scholars, and thieves as well Russia and several other nations.

Myra was overtaken by the Seljuk Turks early in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus around 1085.  To save them from the Islamic invaders sailors from Bari, an important port on the Adriatic coast of southern Italy, seized the relics of Saint Nicholas, over the objections of the monks caring for them at the Cathedral in Myra.  They arrived on May 9, 1087, and a new tomb was built for the intact body of the Saint.  Bari became a pilgrimage site and the relocated Bishop is often called St. Nicholas of Bari in the west. 

About this time, iconography in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions began to divide.  In the east he his generally shown bare headed and bald in rich golden vestments.  In the west he is usually portrayed in a red bishop’s miter and red cloak, symbolic of his office.

Much of the change to a folkloric figure took place in the Netherlands and spread across Northern Europe, where, particularly in eastern Germany, it was blended with even older pagan traditions associated with the worship of Odin.

As the Dutch story evolved, St. Nicholas would arrive every year by ship from Spain about two weeks before his feast day.  With the help of a small, dark skinned helper named Zwarte Piet, Black Peter, he would check on the behavior of children.  Carrying a pack of goodies on his white horse, St. Nicholas would travel from town to town on the eve of his feast day and leave gifts in the wooden shoes of poor children.  This story spread over much of northern Europe and was adapted to local customs.  The names of St. Nicholas and his helper also changed from place to place.  In Dutch he was called Sinterklass.  

St. Nicholas Day was a separate tradition from Christmas.  But because it fell early in the Advent season, it was probably inevitable that the celebrations and the Saint would become intertwined.  Scholars are unsure of exactly when St. Nicholas added Christmas to his rounds of gift giving, but most believe it did not take hold until the early years of the 19th Century in America.

The Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam undoubtedly brought the tradition of St. Nicholas Day with them to the New World.  By the post Revolutionary era it had passed on to English residents of the New York.  Washington Irving, who preserved the old Dutch folk tales—and made more than a few up himself—noted the custom at some point prior to the 1820’s, St. Nicholas had shifted his gift giving to Christmas in areas of the Hudson Valley.

In 1823 a newspaper in Troy, New York published an anonymous poem titled A Visit from St. Nicholas that was later attributed to Clement Clark Moore.  Within years it was being re-printed annually in newspapers across the United States.  In the poem, Moore invented many of the “traditions” associated with St. Nicholas’s visit on Christmas Eve, including his reindeer and sleigh transport and a physical description of “the jolly old elf” that strips him of his Bishop’s regalia, dresses him in fur, and transforms him from a tall, regal figure to a rotund, bearded little man.

This new character was called Santa Claus, derived from the Dutch Sinterklass regionally, but remained better known as St. Nicholas through most of the following century.  Thomas Nast’s mid-century cartoon helped define his appearance, including the fur trimmed cap instead of the miter, top hat, or cowl depicted in earlier illustrations.  There was not much agreement on the color of his outfit, which was often pictured as brown fur trimmed in ermine or as green or blue, until the spread of cheep popular color lithography in which artists used the bishop’s red of Europe because it showed up so brilliantly.

The name Santa Claus did not really begin to overtake St. Nicholas nationally until the New York Sun published its famous editorial Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus in 1897.  It, too, “went viral” and became an annual event in papers across the country.  In 1902 L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Wizard of Oz published a now largely forgotten book, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which was so popular at the time that it virtually completed the metamorphosis of St. Nicholas to Santa Claus.

The physical image of Santa was refined by the illustrators of popular magazine covers in the early decades of the 20th Century, including many by Norman Rockwell.   The fully definitive modern Santa Claus was created by artist Haddon Sundblom for Coca Cola advertising that ran from 1931 to 1964.

Along the way Santa Claus picked up many accouterments that had nothing in common with the Bishop of Myra.  The most obvious of these is Mrs. Claus.  Although there were some early passing references to a spouse for the gift giver as early as the 1850s, she first got wide exposure in a poem by Katherine Lee Bates, best known as the writer of America the Beautiful.  In Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride, she is an uncompromising feminist who show’s Santa what she can do.  She really took off as a separate character in stories and films from the 1950’s on, where she is stripped of Bates’s feminism and is pictured as an adoring, chubby helpmate to her husband.

The power of American film, music, and television has brought Santa Claus to every corner of the globe.  Even in countries with strong St. Nicholas traditions, he has taken on the characteristics of the American Santa.  He also appears in countries with no religious celebration of Christmas and is popular in Japan and Korea.  Under the Soviets, the Russians transformed their patron saint into Father Winter, as Santa Claus clone who visits on New Year’s Eve.

Symbolic of the eclipse of St. Nicholas by Santa Claus is the fate of the statue of St. Nicholas in the town of Demre, Turkey, near the site of historic Myra.  In order to facilitate tourism the now Muslim town commissioned a statue of St. Nicholas to be placed in the town square by a Russian Iconographer.  The Russian government made it a gift to the city and it was dedicated in 2000.  After just a few years, however, the local Mayor discovered that tourists were disappointed.  They had not come to venerate a Saint, but visit the home of Santa Claus.  So the mayor had the original statue removed and replaced by a plastic Santa in a red suit—a Santa modeled after Haddon Sundblom’s Coca Cola creation.

Dutchman Looks Through New Device and Discovers Invisible Creatures

On September 17, 1683 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London describing animalcules—tiny one celled animals invisible to the naked eye now known as protozoa.  In doing so he inadvertently founded a new branch of science—microbiology.

Leeuwenhoek was an unlikely scientist.  At the time most scientific investigation was the sole providence of gentlemen who had the education, leisure time for investigation, and the fortune to support the cost of their work.  He was neither a gentleman or particularly well educated.    He came from a family of tradesmen or what the English called skilled mechanics.  His father was a basket maker and his mother’s family brewers.  They were from Delft, a reasonably prosperous small city in the Netherlands province of South Holland.

As a young man Leeuwenhoek became a draper.  He also worked as a surveyor, wine assayer and as a municipal official.  His occupations made him comfortable, if not wealthy and he was a respected member of the community.  He was friends with and almost the exact contemporary of Delft’s most famous resident the painter Johannes Vermeer and was an executor of his estate when the master died in poverty in 1675.

His commercial success allowed Leeuwenhoek the time to pursue his growing interest in science.  An avid reader, he had read Robert Hooke’s illustrated book Micrographia.  Hook was working with primitive compound microscopes using two lenses.  But the technology of he these devises were primitive and could only magnify objects 20 to 30 times.  Around the mid 1660’s he began to grind lenses in an attempt to create more effective instruments. 

My high school science text credited Leeuwenhoek as the inventor of the microscope.  As you can see, he was not.  Compound microscopes had been around for nearly 40 years.  His devices had single lenses, but the quality of the lenses was so high that he was able to achieve documented magnification of over 200 times.  And evidence from his detailed observations indicates that some of the devices that he constructed may have neared a power of 500.

Leeuwenhoek’s breakthrough—and a closely guarded secret in his life time—was not discovered until 1957 when scientists discovered that he used finely drawn thread of molten glass to create perfect small spheres which became his lenses.  The small lens would be set in a brass or silver plate in front of which would be a pointed rod on an adjustable screw which would hold the object being studied.  Leeuwenhoek, working in the brightest natural light, would hold the devise close to his eye.  

Leeuwenhoek constructed at least 500 different devices, only a handful of which still survive.  He often crafted new microscopes specifically for the specimens he wished to examine.

He made careful, extraordinarily detailed written observations of what he saw.  These observations are so clear modern scientists can often identify the exact species of micro he was observing.  Since his drawing skill were poor, he later also hired a professional illustrator to make drawings to be enclosed in his letters to the Royal Society and other scientists.

His correspondence with the Royal Society continued for more than 50 years through his final illnesses.  The Society frequently published his findings translated from Dutch to English or Latin in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the most important scientific journal in the world at the time.

Among his main discoveries were infusoria, the unicellular animals in pond water now mostly classified as protists; bacteria from the human mouth; vacuoles, important structures in the cells of plants, fungi, and some protia; spermatozoa; the banded structure of mussel fiber; and the blood flow in capillaries.

In his later years Leeuwenhoek was famous.  He was visited by William of Orange and other notables who he let make their own observations with his equipment.  He even presented a microscope to Peter the Great of Russia when he was invited to visit the Tsar’s ship.

Active to the end, he died in Delft in 1723 at the age of 90.

In 1981 Leeuwenhoek’s original specimens, sent to the Royal Society were discovered in a remarkable state of preservation along with many of his hand written notes in Dutch. 

His life and work is a testament to the talent and persistence of a common craftsman.