Achievements of Cambridge University engineering department and the Cambridge Instrument Company, now Carl Zeiss SMT, are commemorated at Cambridge Philosophical Society meeting
Scientists and engineers from around the world gathered in Cambridge University this month (December 2004) to celebrate a half-century of achievement in scanning electron microscopy and look at future developments in SEM techniques and applications. The occasion was the centenary of Professor Sir Charles Oatley, recognised as the father of scanning electron microscopy.
In the ten years between 1951 and 1961, Oatley's team of engineering PhD students built the world's first five SEMs. Then, with the Cambridge Instrument Company (CIC), they developed the first commercial SEM, the StereoScan, launched in 1965.
The meeting was organised by the Cambridge Philosophical Society and jointly sponsored by Carl Zeiss SuMT, the direct successor of CIC.
The meeting was notable for contributions from seven of the eleven PhD students involved in the original work, including D McMullen who built SEM1 in 1951 and ADG Stewart who joined CIC, now Carl Zeiss SMT, to develop the StereoScan.
In his presentation, Stewart emphasised the huge success of the versatile SEM - although just five instruments were made in the first batch, sales rapidly climbed to more than 100 per year in the first three years and other companies quickly joined in.
By 1975, there were over 1500 SEMs in the USA alone and more than 13,000 were in use worldwide by 1985.
As well as looking at the development of the SEM, including the revolutionary Gemini Fesem developments from Zeiss commented upon by RFW Pease, the meeting looked at new imaging techniques and applications.
These included environmental and variable pressure SEM presented by Athene Donald of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, SEM in biological investigations presented by Patrick Echlin of Cambridge Analytical Laboratory, and integrated circuit testing presented by John Thong of the National University of Singapore. The meeting also looked at the origins of microfabrication and the emerging possibilities in nanotechnology.
On show was a replica of SEM1, on loan from the Science Museum, London and information on its Evo, Supra and Ultra descendants.
