Goldman? RE: The first confocal microscope

[Brakenhoff, Fred]

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As far as I know H Goldman in 1940 was the first to apply the confocal principle to imaging, in his case with line excitation/detection. (Goldman H., Spaltlampenphotographie und photometrie. Opthalmologica 98, 257-270)

For further background see the section:
FOUNDATIONS OF THE CLINICAL CONFOCAL MICROSCOPE
Historical Perspectives
Hans Goldmann (1899-1991), best known in ophthalmology for developing and refining the slit-lamp microscope, the 3-mirror goniolens, and the applanation tonometer, published the first description of the clinical confocal microscope in 1940.
Using a tandem scanning slit confocal microscope, Goldmann photographed the animal cornea ex vivo. Despite Goldmann’s earlier description, most historians credit the invention of the confocal microscope to Professor Marvin Minsky, who published his idea as a patent in 1957 (Appendix 1).6,7 Minsky, the son of an ophthalmologist, invented the scanning point confocal microscope while a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.
He developed the scanning point confocal microscope to “solve the problem of scattered light” while studying brain neural tissue. Using single pinhole field apertures, Minsky successfully blocked scattered light from out-of-focus parts of the specimen from reaching the final image. Minsky viewed the first confocal images of solid unstained tissues in real time on a military surplus radarscope. It was fortunate for Minsky that his brotherin- law, Morton Amster, not only liked the instrument but was also a patent attorney or the confocal microscope might never have been documented, as was the case with Minsky’s earlier inventions of the micromanipulator and robot arm.

as cited from the Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society 2003:

Jay C. Erie MD ,  CORNEAL WOUND HEALING AFTER PHOTOREFRACTIVE KERATECTOMY:A 3-YEAR CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY STUDY
Full paper can be found at
www.aosonline.org/xactions/2003/1545-6110_v101_p293.pdf


G.J. Brakenhoff
Section of Molecular Cytology
Centre for Advanced Microscopy
Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences
University of Amsterdam
P.O. Box 94215
1090 GE Amsterdam
e-mail: [hidden email]

________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] on behalf of Guy Cox [[hidden email]]
Sent: 14 November 2012 07:09
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: The first confocal microscope

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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:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Oreopoulos
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 6:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: The first confocal microscope

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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:

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> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
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>
> 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
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