Stylus - Scientific Instruments

Scientific Instruments

Stylus may also refer to the instrument used to scribe a recording into smoked foil or glass. In various scientific instruments this method may be used instead of a pen for recording as it has the advantage of being able to operate over a wide temperature range, does not clog or dry prematurely, and has very small friction in comparison to other methods. These characteristics were useful in certain types of early seismographs and in recording barographs that were once used to verify sailplane records. The styli used in scanning tunneling microscopes have only a single atom at the tip; these are effectively the sharpest styli possible.

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