[ATM] re Anybody home etc.,

[Vladimir Galogaza]

I agree with  Don  who put it perfectly right.

>I don't see the demise of ATM but just the opposite if only the standard
>paradigm  is altered.

Don in his post gave perfect examples and I would like to add one for
illustration, by quoting Berthold Hamburger who wrote few days ago :

> An analogy could be the worry of beginning ATMs who read Texereau and are 
>  >getting scared away from Foucault test due to the complicated setup 
> described in the >book. However, if they are lucky enough to see the 
> crude, simple and yet effective slit >less tester arrangement, they will 
> be back on track soon enough. I think the same >happens with 
> interferometry. If it had not been advertised so strongly for the 
> simplicity >of the Bath interferometer, I might have not even attempted it 
> and I am not exactly new >to the topic of making mirrors. I find myself 
> now almost exclusively using the >interferometer as it is, apart from its 
> quantitive accuracy, in fact easier and faster to use.

Bath interferometer was introduced in 1973. It was not widely accepted
despite its simplicity, beacuse its full advantage  could be exploited only
after computer programs for ATM were introduced recently.
Or putting it in Don's words:

>With expert systems one does not have to know every detail of a process to 
>produce
> good results.

Regards
Vladimir.