IBM CEO John F. Akers (left) in the company's scanning tunnelling microscopy lab. The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was invented by IBM researchers in 1981, work that was recognised by the award of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. It uses a fine needle with an electric potential running through it to scan the surface of an object. It is able to obtain very high magnifications, even visualising individual atoms. IBM researchers have continued to develop the technology, producing advances that include the ability to store increasingly larger amounts of data in smaller and smaller areas and the manipulation of individual atoms. Photographed at IBM Research Almaden campus, San Jose, California, USA, in 1989.