Electron microscope constructed by Ernst Ruska in 1933
In 1926 Hans Busch developed the electromagnetic lens.
According to Dennis Gabor, the physicist Leó Szilárd tried in 1928 to convince him to build an electron microscope, for which he had filed a patent. The first prototype electron microscope, capable of four-hundred-power magnification, was developed in 1931 by the physicist Ernst Ruska and the electrical engineer Max Knoll. The apparatus was the first practical demonstration of the principles of electron microscopy. In May of the same year, Reinhold Rudenberg, the scientific director of Siemens-Schuckertwerke, obtained a patent for an electron microscope. In 1932, Ernst Lubcke of Siemens & Halske built and obtained images from a prototype electron microscope, applying the concepts described in Rudenberg's patent.
In the following year, 1933, Ruska built the first electron microscope that exceeded the resolution attainable with an optical (light) microscope. Four years later, in 1937, Siemens financed the work of Ernst Ruska and Bodo von Borries, and employed Helmut Ruska, Ernst's brother, to develop applications for the microscope, especially with biological specimens. Also in 1937, Manfred von Ardenne pioneered the scanning electron microscope. Siemens produced the first commercial electron microscope in 1938. The first North American electron microscope was constructed in 1938, at the University of Toronto, by Eli Franklin Burton and students Cecil Hall, James Hillier, and Albert Prebus. Siemens produced a transmission electron microscope (TEM) in 1939. Although current transmission electron microscopes are capable of two million-power magnification, as scientific instruments, they remain based upon Ruska’s prototype.
