It is not easy to understand how the electron microscopes and electron
microscope techniques that we know today developed from the primitive ideas of
the first microscopists of the 1930s. Newcomers to the subject in particular,
their time almost fully occupied with grasping practical methods and modern
computing techniques, can rarely devote much attention to the history of their
subject. For some, however, this is a source of frustration: If a guide to the
principal stages in the development of the subject and to the main actors and
their publications were available, they would find the time to study it.