ABSTRACT
In 1949, the Philips factory in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) distributed the fi rst examples of its famous transmission electron microscope, the EM100. Three years before, early in 1946, just eight months after the end of World War II, the board of directors of Philips had decided to build a small number of electron microscopes to test the market and to gain experience with their construction. The production of the fi rst specimen of the lot was hurried along so that it could be demonstrated at a conference on electron microscopy in Oxford in September of the same year. The instrument was ready in the nick of time and was fl own over the day before the conference began. Even though at the supreme moment it would not work (!), those attending the conference were full of praise; one verdict was that it was ‘a dashing new departure in electron microscope design’.1
