 |
Fig. 4. The prototype of the first Stereoscan supplied by the Cambridge Instrument Company to the du Pont Company, U.S.A. (Stewart and Snelling 1965) |
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Fig. 4. The prototype of the first Stereoscan supplied by the Cambridge Instrument Company to the du Pont Company, U.S.A. (Stewart and Snelling 1965) |
At this stage Oatley persuaded Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) (formerly Metropolitan Vickers), a company then manufacturing both transmission instruments and electron probe microanalysers, to take an interest in the SEM. An understanding was reached that if the microscope appeared to be commercially viable, AEI would take it up. Later, in 1958, AEI received an order from Bowden, but for commercial reasons the instrument produced was based on their current production microanalyser, little use was made of the experience gained from the construction and operation of SEM3, and it was not successful. Bowden returned the microscope to AEI and later ordered a copy of the Pease-Nixon microscope from the Engineering Department. This ended AEI's attempt to enter the SEM market (Agar 1996; Brown et. al. 1996).
SEM3 was shipped to Canada in 1958 and used successfully by the PPRIC in their Montreal laboratories and by other companies which hired time on the instrument, including the du Pont chemical company of the USA. This, together with an accelerated flow of results from members of Oatley's Group - Nixon, Thornley, Stewart, Ahmed, Pease, and Broers - produced a change in attitudes towards the SEM as its advantages became better appreciated.
In 1961 Nixon and Smith made an informal approach to the Cambridge Instrument Company, suggesting that the Company should take up manufacture of the SEM as well as the microanalyser, which they were marketing at the time. Shortly afterwards Oatley reached a formal agreement with H C Pritchard, the managing director of the Company, and arrangements were made for the manufacture of two prototypes, one of which went to the du Pont Company (Fig. 4). In 1962 one of Oatley's former research students, A D G Stewart, joined the Company to take over development of the new SEM, and with Government backing, a batch of five microscopes was manufactured in 1965.
Oatley's 1982 paper, 'The early history of the scanning electron microscope', concludes with the following paragraph - a fitting testimony to his pioneering work:
The first four production models, sold under the trade name "Stereoscan", were delivered respectively to P R Thornton of the University of North Wales, Bangor, to J Sikorski of Leeds University, to G E Pfefferkorn of the University of Münster, and to the Central Electricity Research Laboratories. By this time the Company had launched a publicity campaign and orders began to roll in. An additional batch of twelve microscopes was put in hand; and then a further forty........The scanning microscope had come of age.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author is grateful to Alan Agar, Bernie Breton, Paul Brown, David Holburn, Dennis McMullan, Tom Mulvey, Laurence Smith and Oliver Wells, for many useful discussions and for help in the preparation of the manuscript.
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