During recent years, people involved in developing new metals and materials for use in some of the rather extreme conditions of stress, temperature, and environment have relied heavily on the microstructural condition of their materials. In fact, many of the newer materials, such as dispersion-strengthened alloys, have been designed almost entirely by first determining the microstruc ture desired and then finding the right combination of composition, heat treatment, and mechanical working that will result in the de sired microstructure. Furthermore, the extremely high reliability required of materials used today, for example, in aerospace and nuclear energy systems, requires close control on the microstruc tural conditions of materials. This is clearly evident from even a cursory examination of recently written specifications for mate rials where rather precise microstructural parameters are stipu lated. Whereas specifications written several years ago may have included microstructural requirements for details such as ASTM grain size or graphite type, today's specifications are beginning to include such things as volume fraction of phases, mean free path of particles, and grain intercept distances. Rather arbitrary terms such as "medium pearlite" have been replaced by requirements such as "interlamella spacing not to exceed 0. 1 micron. " Finally, materials users have become increasingly aware that when a material does fail, the reason for its failure may be found by examining and "reading" its microstructure. The responsibility for a particular microstructure and a resulting failure is a matter of growing importance in current product liability consider ations.

This work offers a comprehensive source of information on metallographic techniques and their application to the study of metals, ceramics, and polymers. It contains an extensive collection of micro- and macrographs.

Somebody had to do it. The Chinese speak of deep water wells called "grandfather wells" because they take three generations of diggers to complete. Imagine the thought of such a well being abandoned incomplete by the third generation. What a loss! This book is like a grandfather well except that it has taken only two generations, John Hilliard's and mine, to finish. When I saw his manuscript lying in a heap, I decided that I must spend the time to put it and his notes into a publishable form. Now, it is done. This book is mostly about performing spatial measurements through the statistical sampling of images; it is a text on classical stereology as John Hilliard saw it. His vision of the subject was broad. Consequently, its title is broad too. It presents this subject and some of its modem extensions from the classical perspective of the one of the founders of the field, and my first advisor at Northwestern University, John Hilliard. There is nothing new in this book but much that may have been lost over time. It rediscovers many useful discussions about such subjects as the variances of stereo logical measurements, anisotropy etc. It recovers some of the dialogues between John Hilliard and his students on such topics as fractals and Monte Carlo simulations. It recaptures a little of John Hilliard's unique and subtle wit.