Transmission electron microscopy:
Around 1931-32 two German scientists. Knoll and Ruska. Invented transmission electron microscopy, and built the first transmission electron microscope (TEM) in 1938 .Hillier 1940 built a high resolution TEM. A strong beam of electrons, issued from tungsten filaments, passed through vacuum and focussed by electromagnets, producing a radiation wavelength of about 0.0005nm is used to illuminate objects in this electrons strike against a fluorescent screen, or directly fall onto a photographic film, producing an electron micrograph. A practical resolution of about 5 a and magnification of one to several hundred thousand have been achieved by this microscopy, combined with modern cytological techniques, this microscopy has enabled scientists to know of many finer details of cell structure down to the macromolecular level. This knowledge of ultra structure or sub microscopic structure of the cell has resulted into the establishment of Molexular Biology.
Knoll (1935) demonstrated the feasibility of scanning electron microscopy achieving a resolution of about 30 a for three dimensional study of surface topography of objects in considerable details. Von Adrienne (1938) built first scanning electron microscope (SEM) .It is smaller and simpler than TEM. Electrons used SEM does not pass through the object, but are simply scattered from the surface of the object.