Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Ever since electron microscopes were developed, it has been the goal of microscopists to observe specimens in their natural state, free from artefacts which can often be introduced through specimen preparation. For most biological specimens, that includes the presence of water. With a pressure of 10-4 torr or lower required to operate a scanning electron microscope (SEM), liquid water, which required a pressure of above 5 torr, was clearly a problem.
Although several attempts had been made to examine hydrated specimens in a SEM, the first published results of water imaged in a stable and reproducible manner in the SEM, were presented at the Eighth International Congress on Electron Microscopy in Canberra in 1974 (Robinson, 1974).