The birth of analytical electron microscopy (AEM) is somewhat obscure. Was it the recognition of the power and the development of STEM that signaled its birth? Was AEM born with the attachment of a crystal spectrometer to an otherwise conventional TEM? Or was it born earlier with the first analysis of electron loss spectra? It's not likely that any of these developments alone would have been sufficient and there have been many others (microdiffraction, EDS, microbeam fabrication, etc.) that could equally lay claim to being critical to the establishment of true AEM. It is probably more...