Microscopy of ceramics: Through the looking glass and out the other side

Abstract

Because this exposition will be followed by nine distinguished symposium contributions detailing better than could any single individual the modern approaches to microscopical analysis of surfaces and interior microstructures of ceramic solids, I have thought it the wiser course to adopt an historical approach and identify those significant points of departure where substantial leaps were made in our understanding of ceramic materials through the application of microscopical techniques. Developments in two techniques are outlined here.The light microscope was developed in the Netherlands by Hans Jensen and his son Zacharias between 1590 and 1610. This was a compound microscope, consisting of two lenses, but it was the single lens microscope, extensively exploited by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke in the 17th century, that provided the first significant microscopical advances, notably in biology. In 1733 an English barrister, Chester More Hall, discovered that a compound lens comprising glass elements of different dispersion could correct the chromatic aberration which limited the resolution of the compound microscope, although the principle was not applied to microscopy until 1791; and not until 1830 that another barrister, Joseph Lister, set forth the principles underlying correction of spherical aberration.