Historical review

1897

J. J. Thomson made the first measurement of the mass-to-charge ratio of elementary particle ‘corpuscles’, which later became known as electrons. This can fairly be considered as the birth of mass spectrometry.

1918–1919

A. Dempster and F. Aston developed the first mass spectrographs. Photographic plate was used as the array detector. The instruments were used for isotopic relative abundance measurements.

1951

W. Pauli and H. Steinwedel described the development of a quadrupole mass spectrometer. The application of superimposed radio-frequency and constant potentials between four parallel rods acted as a mass separator in which only ions within a particular mass range perform oscillations of constant amplitude and are collected at the far end of the analyser.

1959

K. Biemann was the first to apply electron ionisation mass spectrometry to the analysis of peptides. Later it was shown that for sequence determination, peptides had to be derivatized prior to analysis by a direct probe.

1968–1970

M. Dole was the first to bring synthetic and natural polymers into the gas phase at atmospheric pressure. This was done by spraying a sample solution from a small tube into a strong electric field in the presence of a flow of warm nitrogen, to assist desolvation. First experiments on lysozyme demonstrated the phenomenon of multiple charging.

1974

D. Torgerson introduced plasma desorption mass spectrometry. This technique uses 252Cf fission fragments to desorb large molecules from a target.