[3][4] The journal's original aims, as described in a preface to the first issue, were not limited to biology, but encompassed all branches of science related to the microscope: Recent improvements in the Microscope having rendered that instrument increasingly available for scientific research, and having created a large class of observers who devote themselves to whatever department of science may be investigated by its aid, it has been thought that the time is come when a Journal devoted entirely to objects connected with the use of the Microscope would contribute to the advancement of science, and secure the co-operation of all interested in its various applications.

The object of this Journal will be the diffusion of information relating to all improvements in the construction of the Microscope, and to record the most recent and important researches made by its aid in different departments of science, whether in this country or on the continent.

[5]Contributors to the first issue include Thomas Henry Huxley, Joseph Lister, William Crawford Williamson, and George Shadbolt.

The journal also published short notes and memoranda, aimed "to gather up fragments of information, which singly might appear to be useless but together are of great importance to science"; the editors encouraged non-specialist submissions to this section, considering that "there are few possessors of a Microscope who have not met with some stray fact or facts which, published in this way, may not lead to important results.

"[5] The editors also intended "to relieve the graver and more strictly scientific matter of the Journal by lighter contributions, such as will be found useful to the beginner, not uninteresting to the advanced observer, and of interest perhaps to the general reader.

[13] From 1946, the journal was edited jointly by Carl Pantin, an experimental zoologist and physiologist, and John Baker, a cytologist.

[14] Under the latter's influence, the journal accepted a growing number of papers in the relatively new discipline of cytology, now usually termed cell biology.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, to reduce publication lead times and compete more effectively with Cell (which had been launched in 1974), The Company of Biologists moved away from Cambridge University Press and set up its own in-house typesetting and printing for its journals, by then three in number, becoming pioneers in using disks from authors.

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