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Dear all,
thank you so much for all your answers.
Meanwhile I got a copy of the Goldmann paper on "Spaltlampenphotographie
und -photometrie". Just for the record: Volume 98 apparently appeared
mostly during 1939, so the official reference is Ophtalmologica (1939)
Vol 98 Issue 5/6 pages 257-270. However, the first page of the article
itself says "Januar 1940". (doi:10.1159/000299716)
Goldman describes a problem that ophtalmologists as himself faced during
that time. A slit lamp allows examination of the eye, but only one slit
is in focus at any one time. The rest of the seen image lights up with
stray light. He says that for the experienced ophtalmologist it is
possible to reconstruct the complete image in his mind but photography
was impossible.
He solves the problem by introducing a slit aperture in front of the
film in the attached camera so that only the in focus parts are
recorded. A special mechanism moves the illumination slit over the eye
and synchronously the film behind the slit so that a complete in-focus
image is generated when the mechanism is set in motion.
I guess this qualifies as a confocal system with the slit in front of
the camera being equivalent to a confocal aperture. I am not sure it
qualifies as a microscope, though, since no significant magnification is
involved. The article does contain images. I have to admit that I do not
recognize very much and I do not know whether this is due to my absent
knowledge of ophthalmology or due to poor quality of my copy or both.
The apparatus was built by Haag-Streit, according to the article. They
are still in business. I don't know though if current slit lamps for
ophthalmology still work by that principle
I have another question about the Petran-System. The US-Patent contains
the well-known epi-llumination version but in addition includes a
version for transmission, with two objectives, one on either side of the
preparation. Was this version actually built?
The link to the respective Google patent page is
http://www.google.com/patents/US3517980?printsec=drawing&dq=ininventor:%22Milan+Hadravsky%22&ei=g0qlUOe3H8fe4QTMuIGADA#v=onepage&q&f=false
The transmission system is shown in Figures 3 and 4.
Guy, if you should happen to have a copy of your historical reviews
still available, I surely would appreciate them.
Steffen
On 16.11.2012 09:20, Guy Cox wrote:
> Minsky wrote a memoir about this work - with a picture of the microscope:
> Minsky, M., 1988. Memoir on inventing the confocal scanning microscope. Scanning, 10, 128-138.
>
> For those interested in the slit-scanning ophthalmological microscopes mentioned by Fred Brakenhoff (and which seem to have well predated the point-scanning confocal) the following references may be of interest:
>
> Koester, C. J., 1980. Scanning mirror microscope with optical sectioning characteristics: applications in opthalmology. Appl. Optics, 19 1749-1757.
> Koester, C. J., 1990. A comparison of various optical sectioning methods: the scanning slit confocal microscope. In: Handbook of Biological Confocal Microscopy, 2nd edn. Pawley, J. B., (ed.) Plenum Press, pp. 207 214.
> Maurice, D., 1974. A scanning slit optical microscope. Invest. Opthal. 13, 1033-1037.
>
> These generally used a beam-path in which illumination was through one half of the objective and detection through the other half. I don't know if Goldman's 1940 microscope used this approach. (Fred?)
>
> Guy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andreas Bruckbauer
> Sent: Friday, 16 November 2012 9:39 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The first confocal microscope
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> *****
>
> This seems to be Marvin Minsky himself about his invention and the biologica problem he wanted to solve
>
> http://www.webofstories.com/play/53057?o=R
>
> and Aaron Klug about the debvelopments at the LMB
>
> http://www.webofstories.com/play/17028?o=S&srId=314441
> http://www.webofstories.com/play/17029?o=MS
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guy Cox<[log in to unmask]>
> To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY<[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:29
> Subject: Re: The first confocal microscope
>
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> *****
>
> OK, a few points. Marvin Minsky probably did make the first confocal microscope that formed an image. Hiroto Naora made, in the 1940s, a confocal micro-spectrophotometer which measured one point at a time. He gave an historical paper about it at an Australian Microscopy Conference in Canberra
> some years ago (he was working in ANU at the time). His work was published in
> top US journals so I suspect it was known to Minsky but a long correspondence with Minsky ended abruptly when I asked that question.
>
> I find it improbable that Minsky was imaging silicon chips since they didn't exist at the time. Certainly what he wanted to image was the brain, or slices of it. Whether he ever did I don't know - none of his images (displayed on a long-persistence CRT) were recorded for posterity, which suggests that they weren't too inspiring.
>
> Petràn designed the first spinning disk microscope in Czechoslovakia - how much he knew about previous work is not clear. Davidovits& Eggar at Yale were initially collaborating with Petràn but then Steve Baer (who is still around and
> active) introduced them to Minsky's patent and they went on to make the first single-point laser scanning confocal. Their interest was also connections in the brain, and they did publish micrographs.
>
> This work was known to Colin Sheppard and Tony Wilson in Oxford, who made the first commercial CLSM, marketed as the Bio-Rad SOM100 until Bio-Rad ditched it in favour of Brad Amos' MRC design.
>
> This is a very telescoped account. I gave a paper on this many years ago at a US conference - either the combined FOM-Scanning meeting in Atlantic City or at a later Scanning meeting in Monterey. I also published an article in the Australian EM Newsletter, but I appreciate that this is not a very accessible reference.
>
> Guy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Oreopoulos
> Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 6:36 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The first confocal microscope
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> *****
>
> Hi Steffen,
>
> I don't have a definite answer for all your questions, but I'd certainly like to know as well. My impression from the early literature is (as you pointed out) that the spinning disk variant of the confocal microscope developed quite independently of the laser-scanning approach. I suspect this is because the scanning action of a Nipkow disk used to create an image had been known long before Minsky's ideas were put onto paper. In fact, some early mechanical televisions even used this principle. See here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gottlieb_Nipkow
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYGxEk0btA&feature=related
>
> There is a very good paper that details the history of the laser-scanning approach that emerged in the 1980's by Brad Amos:
>
> Amos, W.B. and J.G. White, How the confocal laser scanning microscope entered biological research. Biology of the Cell, 2003. 95(6): p. 335-342.
>
> I think by the time MRC came online commercially and during its development, the Minsky patent had probably run out, but the makers were well aware of it (the paper above mentions this). Don't forget Minsky was imaging microchip circuits, not biological materials, and the requirements/parts for a confocal microscope to be used for biological imaging probably only became practical when lasers/computers/etc (long after 1955) became cheaper. There are some significant differences. Looking back, you can definitely see that the confocal's (laser scanning or spinning disk) development was very incremental over the first few decades.
>
> John Oreopoulos
> Research Assistant
> Spectral Applied Research
> Richmond Hill, Ontario
> Canada
> www.spectral.ca
>
>
>
> On 2012-11-13, at 1:36 PM, Steffen Dietzel wrote:
>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
>> *****
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> it seems to be general textbook-knowledge that Marvin Minsky
>> constructed the
> first confocal microscope.
>>
>> I am wondering about two things: 1. Did he? and 2. Did his description
>> in the
> now famous patent have an impact on later work or did later authors reinvent the whole thing and only then found out that Minsky was earlier?
>>
>> Concerning 1:
>> I recently found references to a paper by Hiroto Naora from 1951 which
>> seems
> to describe a system with confocal apertures. He used them to avoid stray light by restricting illumination to a circle of some micrometers (!) at a time. He imaged (nearly) a whole cell nucleus at once and there was no scanning but the general principle seems to be there. Not diffraction limited of course, but probably Minsky's system, also was not, although he was using a small illumination spot:
>> Science 14 September 1951
>> Vol. 114 no. 2959 pp. 279-280
>> DOI: 10.1126/science.114.2959.279
>> https://www.sciencemag.org/content/114/2959/279.extract?sid=aa1d62d2-4
>> cc7-4087-8d30-01633ca3f84d
>>
>> An interesting article by Colin Sheppard
>> (http://www.imaging-git.com/science/light-microscopy/confocal-microsco
>> py) in addition mentions a paper from 1940 by Goldman with a confocal
>> slit system, but I wasn't able to get the complete reference so far
>> and thus couldn't get the paper. (Stupidly, the web site gives only
>> the first three references. Maybe somebody can help here.)
>>
>> So I wonder, are these earlier descriptions not considered confocal
>> for some
> reason or did they go unnoticed by text book authors?
>>
>>
>> Concerning 2:
>> For example the Petran et al. Paper from 1968 introduding the
>> tandem-Nipkow
> Scanner (http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOSA.58.000661) does not mention Minsky. Same with some other early confocal papers I checked. So I wonder when the confocal people acutally became aware of the Minsky patent.
>>
>>
>> And an extra question: What is the first published or preserved
>> picture taken with a confocal microscope? Would that be the ones in
>> the 1967 Egger and Petran paper? (Science 21 July 1967: 305-307.
>> [DOI:10.1126/science.157.3786.305] )
>>
>>
>> I am looking forward to get your thoughts on these questions.
>>
>> Steffen
>>
>> --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Steffen Dietzel, PD Dr. rer. nat
>> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Walter-Brendel-Zentrum für
>> experimentelle Medizin (WBex) Head of light microscopy
>>
>> Mail room:
>> Marchioninistr. 15, D-81377 München
>>
>> Building location:
>> Marchioninistr. 27, München-Großhadern
>
>
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Steffen Dietzel, PD Dr. rer. nat
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Walter-Brendel-Zentrum für experimentelle Medizin (WBex)
Head of light microscopy
Mail room:
Marchioninistr. 15, D-81377 München
Building location:
Marchioninistr. 27, München-Großhadern
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