Microscopists only dreamed about seeing atoms until 1951. The concept of atoms is believed to have originated in the writings of Democritus in 430 B.C., actually seeing images of atoms in a microscope became a fact only in 1951 with the publication by Erwin W. Müller, announcing his field ion microscope, FIM. Typical of the great scientist that he was, Müller immediately thought of ways to improve his new microscope and his goal then became achieving atomic resolution microscopy as he thought of it - the ability to not only see individual atoms, but to resolve the adjacent atoms comprising the atomic lattice of a crystal surface.