The analysis of solid materials by introducing solid test sampies directly into the graphite furnace of an atomic absorption spectrometer must be regarded as a powerful analytical approach. Even if it is - of course - not the "ultimate method." After three decades of development, the instrumentation and the methodology are available to apply solid sampling successfully for the analysis of almost every material. Moreover, several tasks cannot be solved using other analytical methods as neatly as they can using direct solid sampling. The conventional methods work more or less satisfactorily, so...