Electron Microscopy and Microprobe Analysis: Recalling the Ambience of Some Inventions

Abstract

Abstract Looking back, the period 1935 to 1945 was a most exciting, even spectacular, decade during which a remarkably small group of researchers, scattered throughout Europe and North America, took the magnetic transmission electron microscope (TEM) from a rather quiescent, theoretical concept to a reasonably reliable, practical instrument in serial production. In that decade the same group took the resolving power of the TEM from a doubtful comparison with a light microscope to a value that was routinely 20-fold beyond the limit of the light microscope and, in the hands of experts, 200-fold beyond! It was also in that decade that the electron microprobe analyzer was invented.