Archives Helmut Föll © Prof. Dr. Helmut Föll (retired) University of Kiel; Faculty of Engineering

In Progress

What's left?

Old South German, now resting in the Regensburger Stadtmuseum. From the "Gräberfeld Alteglofsheim"; early bronze age

When I studied the older literature to the Luristan iron "mask swords, I found that most pictures (taken by some kind of microscope) were of very poor quality. Of course, the text explained what the pictures illustrated so I still got the relevant information. Yes, but science has progressed since then and it is quite possible that I could have extracted more information from those pictures than the original author. Why are pictures in scientific journals so poor? Well, there are several reasons: Pretty much all pictures shown in printed journals or books are much smaller than the originals that the author produced with the help of some microscope. The number of pixels is greatly reduced and thus information is lost. Moreover, printed journal pictures are always of much poorer quality than the (small) prints the author had made herself on high-quality photographic paper. Worse, even large high-quality prints contained far less informations than the original negatives since the contrast range of any print is far smaller than that of a negative. Bad news. But it gets worse. What we find today when we go for an old publication are mostly scans from copies of copies - and that did not improve the picture quality. I have personally produced a large number of analogue pictures, mostly with microscopes of all kinds. Some of my pictures were quite interesting for science at "their" time. Some needed to be rather large to allow seeing what there was to see. In the (invariably small) published version most of the information contained in the original had disappeared. Some pictures were even the very "firsts" of their type (e.g. the first picture of a heterogeneous interface at atomic resolution) and thus at least of sentimental value. The important ones of "my" pictures (a few percent of all the pictures I took) did end up in printed publications, invariably with a substantial loss of size and quality. Most of my pictures, however, were neve published because journals necessarily have limits. In the old days you just accepted these limitations as facts of life that couldn't be changed. Nowadays we have the Internet and many of the problems mentioned above have disappeared. In fact, quite a few of my pictures can be found in my hyperscripts at large size and decent quality. My original pictures (and negatives), as well as all the pictures from other researchers, will eventually fade out and disappear. Well, you might say, why not?. After all, it is only important that the knowledge gained from all that microscope work lives on. I agree in principle, as most scientists would do, I suppose. However, our colleagues from the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaftler") have a different point of view. In their field it is not good enough that, for example, millions of printed copies of Goethe's "Faust" exist, you need to have the original in Goethe's handwriting so you can treasure and preserve it for eternity in some archive. I do find it somewhat unfair that the original work of writers, poets, philosophers, theologians and so forth must be preserved for eternity but not the work of scienitists. I could well imagine that future historians, trying to figure out what really happened during the crazy 20th century and beyond, would love to find some authentic stuff from science just as much as some hand-written draft of some poem long since forgotten. With all of that in mind I decided to create a "hyper" archive (today one would probably call it a "cloud archive") for my more memorable pictures (and a few other things). One tends to get bored in retirement. Included are pictures that also figure in some hyperscripts; in this case links are provided I also include some key publications that will give the scientific background to the pictures in this archive. I'm fully aware of the fact that the world at large and even the small world of science can live quite well without my pictures. They only add infinitesimally if at all to the progress of science. Just like almost all pictures from other scientists. And yet - the total somehow had and has a large effect on the world at large. Of course, most of the pictures in the Ne are not posted by scientists and thus add nothing at all to science. In short: The Internet is large, entropy must increase, an adding my stuff will not bring it down.

How to Start

	Use the Menu on the left. This leaves four alternatives:
		Click on "Introduction" and start at the beginning.
		Click on a chapter that looks interesting and take it from there.
		Click on Module Matrix, and start with whatever looks interesting.
		Click on Indexlist, see which key word catches your eye, click on it and see what you get.
	Go the direct way

Background Information

	This hyperscript used to be the script to a lecture course. The lecture course has not been given for years and now it is a kind of stand-alone "book". I have done some final editing but did not remove all allusions to the lecture course.
	This hyperscript contains many peculiarities in its formatting and style of writing. This was done with some objectives in mind. Find out about this here.
	There are more Hyperscripts available. If you are really curious about the Hyperscripts of "AMAT", you will find some information in the link.

Technical Information

	Which Browser should you use? This Hyperscript is optimized for the Windows Explorer but works also quite well with Mozilla.
		Other browsers might scramble equations. The link opens a "Check your Browser" page, which will show if your browser is OK.
	The "print friendly" and ".pdf" options only work for the "backbone" part of the Hyperscript (consult the "Matrix of Modules" for the meaning of "backbone").
	If you click on "Project" in the menu (or here), you will find some more information about the structure of this Hyperscript and the philosophy behind it.
		For example, if you like to read prefaces, you will find it there.
		Many other metafiles are also accessible from there.
	The remaining menu buttons (e.g. Indexlist etc.) provide automatically generated cross-linked lists which might be useful if you are looking for specific items.

Disclaimer

	The following disclaimer is required by German Law:
		Hiermit distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten auf dieser Homepage und mache mir diese Inhalte nicht zu eigen. Diese Erklärung gilt für alle auf meinen Seiten angebrachten Links, die außerhalb meines direkten Einflussbereiches liegen. H. Föll
		Herewith I declare that I have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of linked pages as far as they are not my own, or not within my direct sphere of influence. H. Foell
	Claimer:
		It's all mine! However, I usually do give permission to use all of it if you ask me. Address e-mails to . You must type it in, because direct links are susceptible to abuse.
	Impressum

© H. Föll