We follow a development in the field of microscopy from 16th to the 20th century. Article starts with optical microscopy. We discuss its fundamental limit on the resolution. It has origin in the wave nature of light. The same limit holds for next generation of microscopes which make use of different kinds of elementary particles. New possibilities appear with Binning's and Rohrer's scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The principles of STM are explained in the second part of article. Atomic resolution was reached firstly with this approach. In can be also used as a tool for manipulation with individual atoms. On the other hand STM is constrained only to conducting samples. The third part of article is concerned with the atomic force microscope (AFM). AFM arise from the STM and it is not limited to the conducting samples. We summarise other advantages of this method, particularly paying attention to the problems of interpretation of the experimental data.