84: Tunnel Vision
We explore the story of a new way to "see" atoms on surfaces invented in the 1970s and 1980s, scanning probe microscopy. We hear of Gerd Binnig, and Heinrich Rohrer, at the Zürich branch of IBM research, and how they came up with the scanning tunneling microscope in the late 1970s. Then in the mid-1980s, more IBM researchers invented a sibling technique, atomic force microscopy, which is good for non-conducting surfaces. Both techniques caused quite a splash in the scientific world, and made people wonder what it is they were seeing using these tools, and is it really a form of "seeing"?
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