Ladiee an& gentlemen !
It is a great pleasure for me to say some words to inaugurate our symposium. We are very glad that so many scientists, especially our lecturers, have come. The fact that we have participants from 14 countries from all over the world demonstrates that smaller conferences dealing with special and significant subjects are of high interest. I think this a true statement, for travelling from as far as California, Novosibirsk, or Nagoya in order to meet here proves the interest in our symposium and its topical importance.
Allow me some historical remarks on the development of the internationality of electron microscopy. In 1948 in Delft and in 1960 in Paris the first conferences took place which we can call conferences with international participation. By the way, at this time we just constructed our first electron microscopes in the do-it-yourself mode. Then, in 1954, the first bigger international conference was held in London, organized by an international joint committee. A t this conference the first steps were made towards the foundation of the International Federation of Societies for Electron Microscopy. The 1958 Conference in Berlin, very well organized with all papers printed in two big volumes, was the first one under the auspices of the International Federation. Since then it has been tnade a rule that every four years a great international conference takes place, with regional conferences in between. As all of us know, the conferences are getting more and more extensive, simply because the total field is treated, including the wide field of application.
Most of us very well remember the first lectures on the newly developing highvoltage electron microscopy. On the 1954 London Conference one paper was given using the term "high-voltage electron microscope" describing an instrument for 225 kV. In 1958 in Berlin two papers reported on a 350 kV microscope. In Philadelphia, in 1962, Dupouv and PERRIER spoke about the development in Toulouse and