Hooke's Flea, from Micrographia
Robert Hooke's engraving of a flea from Micrographia, published by the Royal Society in 1665.
Micrographia was the Royal Society's first great publishing success and the first book to show what a microscope could reveal to a general reader. Hooke's fold-out plates of a flea, a louse and the eye of a fly were unlike anything the public had seen, and it was in this book that he called the compartments in cork 'cells'. Pepys sat up until two in the morning reading it. Read the full story in our article on Science and Sovereignty: The Royal Society and the Expansion of British Knowledge, 1660–1720.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
