Pioneers of electron microscopy like the Canadian physicist James HillierHillier, James (1915–2007) could hardly understand in retrospect why individual researchers in the mid-1930s invested so much time and energy in the construction of high-resolution electron microscopes, even though the objects they studied were “hardly more exotic than the cutting edge of a razor blade”. According to Hillier, most observers in the mid-1930s assumed that only very resilient objects would withstand the high electron energies and vacuumVacuum physics and technology conditions necessary for high-resolution images. HillierHillier, James may have exaggerated somewhat here in order to amplify the achievements of those researchers who stubbornly continued on their path against all (scientific, technical, social, and psychological) obstacles and made it possible for electron microscopy to achieve a breakthrough. However, it is clear that the lack of evidence that the structures of complex organic objects could also be imaged using the electron microscope initially posed a psychological obstacle to the acceptance and further development of electron microscopy.