Recent advances in cameras and computers have made it possible to build electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) cameras which can give crystallographic information from specimens in the scanning electron microscope (SEM) on a routine basis. There are a few hundred such systems world wide and the number is growing fast. In the case of crystalline samples (nearly all applications of SEM outside the biomedical field), it will surely soon be considered essential to fit an SEM with an EBSD system, just as it is now considered essential to have the SEM equipped with an energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) system. There are at feast four commercial manufacturers of EBSD systems.