Sterling Price Newberry (August 10, 1915 – January 28, 2017) was an American inventor and

microscopist Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view subjects too small to be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of microscopy: optical, el ...

. He was born in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the List of cities in Missouri, third most populous city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County, Missouri, Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 censu ...

. Newberry invented the shadow

X-ray microscope An X-ray microscope uses electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray band to produce magnified images of objects. Since X-rays penetrate most objects, there is no need to specially prepare them for X-ray microscopy observations. Unlike visible light, ...

and was one of the founders of the

Microscopy Society of America The Microscopy Society of America (MSA), founded in 1942 as The Electron Microscope Society of America, is a non-profit organization that provides microanalytical facilities for studies within the sciences. Currently, there are approximately 3000 me ...

. He

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarian ...

in August 2015 and died in January 2017 at the age of 101.Microscopy Society of America - News
/ref> The first

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

microscope A microscope () is a laboratory equipment, laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic ...

s had used grazing off lenses at a very low angle to focus X-ray images. The images, however, were blurry from

diffraction Diffraction is the deviation of waves from straight-line propagation without any change in their energy due to an obstacle or through an aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the Wave propagation ...

. While working on an alternate approach for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

, a

technician A technician is a worker in a field of technology who is proficient in the relevant skill and technique, with a relatively practical understanding of the theoretical principles. Specialisation The term technician covers many different special ...

came to him with a

badge A badge is a device or accessory, often containing the insignia of an organization, which is presented or displayed to indicate some feat of service, a special accomplishment, a symbol of authority granted by taking an oath (e.g., police and fir ...

. The technician did not believe there were X-Rays in the machine, he had taken his warning badge, with X-ray film, and placed a bit of screen wire on it. He pulled the badge out and saw the exposed screen wire

pattern A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated l ...

on it. He also saw another screen wire pattern, however, far smaller and finer. Newberry recognized that the fine pattern was the screen wire mounting for the

specimen Specimen may refer to: Science and technology * Sample (material), a limited quantity of something which is intended to be similar to and represent a larger amount * Biological specimen or biospecimen, an organic specimen held by a biorepository f ...

, but it was 400-to-the-inch wire and it had been magnified by expansion of the

shadow A shadow is a dark area on a surface where light from a light source is blocked by an object. In contrast, shade occupies the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross-section of a shadow is a two-dimensio ...

. This gave him the insight he needed to create a working commercial microscope, placing the specimen very close to a point source of X-rays and then further back a

photographic plate Photographic plates preceded film as the primary medium for capturing images in photography. These plates, made of metal or glass and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, were integral to early photographic processes such as heliography, d ...

. The "shadow" of the specimen would be under-exposed, that is X-ray dark, on the plate. This process is similar to medical X-rays, except that the microscope uses a point source for clarity whereas a medical x-ray tends to use a much larger x-ray source to avoid

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...

References

External links

Early electron microscope

Microscopy Society of America
1915 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American inventors American men centenarians People from Springfield, Missouri {{US-inventor-stub