Michael P. Balogh
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This month's column continues with Part II of the three-part series, "A Mass Spectrometry Primer." To recap the basis for
undertaking this work, technological changes that affect our knowledge, in terms of its depth and our speed of accessing it,
spurs a couple of observations about print media versus electronic. Anything published must be scholarly because it often
serves as a primary resource for certain facts, equations, and other things we can't, or won't, remember. Paradoxically, almost
as soon as we commit words to describing or explaining a fast-developing area of technology, their value diminishes as new
insights form. And though the marvels of electronic communication are considerable, they nevertheless fail to resolve all
of print's shortcomings as a static medium. For example, increasingly ubiquitous web logs usually are focused narrowly and
are posted by a single individual. We have yet to benefit from the deeper understanding of our science that interactive conversations
could bring.
As for primers, they abound in various forms and various authors and some are referenced here. But this primer, which lives
on the internet, differs from all others. It is a self-validating document, continually updated with the comments and suggestions
of American and European scientists. Please feel free to post your observations on this electronic primer, which you can access
by visiting the Waters website at http://www.waters.com/ and then clicking Resource Library > Primers.
Contents of Part II
What Types of Instruments Are in Use? The analyzer: the heart of a mass spectrometer
• Quadrupoles and magnetic sectors
–Fragmentation
• Ion traps and other nonscanning instruments
–Fast-Fourier transform ion cyclotron
–Time-of-flight
• Hybrids
–Quadrupole time-of-flight
–Ion mobility
• Data Handling
–Data output, storage, and retrieval
A Brief History of Mass Spectrometry- 1897: Modern mass spectrometry (MS) is credited to the cathode-ray-tube experiments of J.J. Thomson of Manchester, England.
- 1953: Wolfgang Paul's invention of the quadrupole and quadrupole ion trap earned him the Nobel Prize in physics.
- 1968: Malcolm Dole developed contemporary electrospray ionization (ESI) but with little fanfare. Creating an aerosol in a
vacuum resulted in a vapor that was considered too difficult to be practical. Liquid can represent a volume increase of 100
to 1000 times its condensed phase (1 mL/min of water at standard conditions would develop 1 L/min of vapor).
- 1974: Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) was developed by Horning largely based upon gas chromatography (GC),
but APCI was not adopted widely.
- 1983: Vestal and Blakely's work with heating a liquid stream became known as thermospray. It became a harbinger of today's
commercially applicable instruments.
- 1984: Fenn's work with ESI was published leading to his Nobel Prize-winning work published in 1988.
For more historical detail, see http://www.masspec.scripps.edu/mshistory/
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