How Did Eric Betzig Get the Science Data So Fast?

Eric Betzig says the method was obvious the moment violet light switched the molecules on. He and the other experimenter knew it worked, then raced.

Within less than a month they plated thin cryo-sections instead of a whole cell, so the sample stayed two-dimensional and out-of-focus light from the third dimension stayed off the picture. The slices ran through lysosomes. They had only a 10-milliwatt laser, so they worked around the clock and babied a cheap microscope whose focus drifted. It was November and cold, in an old dark room converted for the work. They kept the effort quiet in a big lab full of postdocs and graduate students, who called the two old guys the gruesome twosome. Within three months they had all the data in the Science paper. Post-processing was easy, and the build was trivial, a gift just waiting to be plucked. The wait came because they were unemployed and paid out of pocket for a 10-milliwatt 561 laser to excite the fluorescent protein.