Let's face it, nobody became a microscopist because they wanted to become an expert in Vacuum Science. The fact is that most of us were shown the proverbial “fly's eye” micrograph and fancied ourselves as the Ansel Adams of Electron Microscopy. As a consequence, during the progress of our careers, we have had to come to grips with Vacuum Science, usually on a “need to know” basis. Specifically, when the system has broken down, we need to know who can fix it … when they can fix it … and why they can not fix it sooner…

Nevertheless, the fact is that we ignore vacuum science at our peril. Although microscopes can withstand a lot of abuse before they catastrophically fail, they respond to poor vacuum practice with poor vacuum quality. In the final analysis ifs extremely valuable to have some “Vacuum sawy”.