Marshall Barber and the origins of micropipette methods

Current methods for the study of renal physiology depend heavily on the use of micropipettes fashioned from glass capillary tubes. The technique for making glass micropipettes and manipulating them in the field of a compound microscope appears to have been invented about 1904 by Marshall A. Barber, a bacteriologist at the University of Kansas. Barber's methods were passed on and successively modified by G. L. Kite and R. Chambers, and were finally adapted for renal studies by A. N. Richards. The apparatus for perfusing isolated segments of renal tubules in vitro is remarkably similar to the original device used by Barber over three-quarters of a century ago.