Introduction

Visual images can be effective devices for communicating facts. Yet this does not imply that whenever images propagate the facts automatically come along – nor do facts that travel in images always travel well. The relation of images, facts and their travels is more complex. The complex relationship will be explored in this text for the case of microscopy images in the field of nanotechnology and their travels both through scientific publications and popular media.

Nanotechnology researchers produce images using probe microscopy, such as scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), and electron microscopy. Unlike optical microscopy, which resolves structures in the range of millimetres and fractions thereof, these types of microscopy operate at the level of atoms and attain atomic resolution. Scientists use the instruments to image and analyse atomic and molecular structures. But importantly, probe microscopes also allow researchers to produce and manipulate such nanoscale structures. Through the exploitation of quantum mechanical effects, these instruments are employed to produce objects (e.g., materials) with novel properties. This potential and practice is considered a defining and characteristic constituent of nanotechnology (cf. Baird et al. 2004; Mody 2004; Daston and Galison 2007, chap. 7; Hennig 2010).