Scanning Probe Microscopy, 1960-2000
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Crafting the Tools of Knowledge: The Invention, Spread, and Commercialization of Probe Microscopy, 1960-2000 Citation for published version (APA): Mody, C. C. M. (2004). Crafting the Tools of Knowledge: The Invention, Spread, and Commercialization of Probe Microscopy, 1960-2000. Document status and date: Published: 01/01/2004 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. 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Download date: 10 Oct. 2021 CRAFTING THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE INVENTION, SPREAD, AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF PROBE MICROSCOPY, 1960-2000 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Cyrus Cawas Maneck Mody August 2004 © 2004 Cyrus Cawas Maneck Mody CRAFTING THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE INVENTION, SPREAD, AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF PROBE MICROSCOPY, 1960-2000 Cyrus Cawas Maneck Mody, Ph.D. Cornell University 2004 This dissertation is an historical and ethnographic examination of the invention, replication, and routinization of scanning probe microscopy, a family of ultrahigh resolution surface characterization techniques found today in surface science, materials science, electrochemistry, biophysics, and nanotechnology, as well as in industrial reliability and quality control laboratories, in semiconductor manufacturing, in high school science fair projects, and even on the surface of Mars. The dissertation begins with the less-than-successful story of the Topografiner, a precursor of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) at the US National Bureau of Standards at the end of the ’60s that failed to prove the concept of probe microscopy or win managerial approval. The STM itself originated at the IBM Research lab in Zurich. Its inventors committed themselves to a naïve experimental practice that allowed them to push past certain obstacles and to forge much-needed collaborations, particularly with surface scientists. Surface scientists were the first to bring the STM to the big North American corporate laboratories at IBM and Bell Labs. There, tunneling microscopy became a locus for training young researchers as well as for generating new surface scientific knowledge. Simultaneously, the STM was adopted by a handful of academic groups in California, who cultivated a more freewheeling way of integrating pedagogy and microscope-building. By 1990, building an STM had become easy enough that many people joined the community; this influx provoked a number of internal frictions, finally erupting in a controversy about whether the STM could atomically resolve DNA. This debate was resolved partly through the intervention of microscope manufacturers associated with the California academic groups. As these manufacturers grew, they faced the problem of keeping themselves distinct from, yet close to, the experimental cultures of their customers. The probe microscopy community changed radically after it became possible to buy instruments from these manufacturers. Some of these changes have led probe microscopists to begin leading their community into the larger field of nanotechnology. This accords well with some nanotechnologists’ vision of probe microscopy, but integrating the two cultures has proven difficult. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Cyrus Mody was born September 25, 1974 in Omaha, Nebraska and spent the first year of his life in Rabindranath Tagore’s dresser drawer at the Theosophical Society in Madras, India. After moving around until he was five, he spent his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas, where his interest in science was awakened by attending summer courses at the University of Kansas’ Museum of Natural History. He graduated in 1997 from Harvard University with an A.B., magna cum laude, in mechanical and materials engineering. That same year, he enrolled in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell and began the work that led to this dissertation. iii For my parents C.M.S. and Janet Mody and in honor of small, lopsided creatures iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people’s voices can be heard in this dissertation; and though none of them bear any responsibility for the defects and errors of this work, they deserve many thanks for its broad outlines. No voices can be heard here more strongly than those of my committee members. Ron Kline was my adviser for my first three years at Cornell, and his kindness and eagerness to learn new things made it easy to enjoy studying the history of engineering and technology. For administrative reasons, Mike Lynch became my adviser just before I began the research for this dissertation, and his calm puzzling out of social analysis has pointed me to many of the social knots discussed here. Even when I could not quite explain what the project was, Mike had faith that it would come to something; and when I could explain it better he offered the encouragement and insight to make it better. Though never my adviser, Trevor Pinch offered an enthusiastic model for the spirit and methodology of qualitative research. Since Trevor so obviously enjoys his research, I’ve tried to follow his path; I hope some of the fun of meeting probe microscopists comes across in this dissertation. Finally, Peter Dear joined my committee at the very end as my field-appointed reader. My first acquaintance with science and technology studies was in Peter’s classroom, though, and his probing attitude gave me the sense of what the field was about. One question from Peter can be worth hours of discussion with most people, and several of his questions can be seen in this study. Once I started doing the research for this project, I began meeting scholars outside Cornell whose interests resonated with my own, three of whom deserve special thanks. Dave Kaiser at MIT was the first to give me a sense that what I was working on could be interesting to a wider audience, and the first to point me to thinking of the settings described in Chapters Four and Five as pedagogical environments. Arne v Hessenbruch at the Dibner Institute and MIT was the first person I met who agreed that the STM and AFM were fascinating enough to deserve study. Like Peter, one question from Arne can stir up many insights, and his ribbing has definitely made my analysis better. Finally, Davis Baird at South Carolina introduced me to the nascent community of historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of nanotechnology. His generosity, and the discovery of this dynamic group of scholars, recharged my enthusiasm for the project in the final stages. It goes without saying that this project would have been impossible without the help of numerous probe microscopists all over the world. A list of the people I interviewed is in the Appendix, but I would like to thank a few individuals for their support. Rowan Dordick, Mike Ross, and Martin Hug at, respectively, the IBM research labs at Yorktown Heights, Almaden, and Zurich helped me set up interviews, and provided me with names, documents, information, and encouragement. I had a uniformly positive experience meeting Big Blue’s gang of STMers and AFMers. Also at IBM, Jane Frommer showed an abiding curiosity about my project and a willingness to point me in interesting directions. Similarly, Joe Griffith at Bell Labs offered me his unique insights and support both when I interviewed him and later when I took his and Phil Russell’s microscopy course at Lehigh. From Digital Instruments, Virgil Elings and James Massie both gave me fascinating, if very different, meals. Also at DI/Veeco, Ken Babcock was an enthusiastic host, and he and Matt Thompson gave me invaluable leads on further sources of information. Two former Park Scientific Instruments employees, Mike Kirk and John Alexander, played a similar role in putting me in touch with the network of Park and Quate group veterans. Several representatives of smaller firms also made me feel at home: Klaus Weishaupt (WITec), Paul West and Gary Aden (Thermomicroscopes), John Green (RHK), Dave Farrell (Burleigh), Robert Sum (Nanosurf), Thomas Berghaus vi (Omicron), Stuart Lindsay (Molecular Imaging and Arizona State), Eric Henderson (BioForce Labs), etc. Among academic microscopists, Paul and Helen Hansma of UC Santa Barbara were gracious hosts for an afternoon; Randy Feenstra at Carnegie Mellon was a generous interlocutor who sharpened several of the arguments in this dissertation; and Paul Weiss at Penn State was a helpful and familiar face at the 2001 STM Conference in Vancouver.