page_title: Microplate
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Microplate / History
caption_attribution_description: English: ELx405 Microplate Washer from BioTek Instruments.
context_page_description: A microplate or microtiter plate, microwell plate, multiwell, is a flat plate with multiple "wells" used as small test tubes. The microplate has become a standard tool in analytical research and clinical diagnostic testing laboratories. A very common usage is in the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, the basis of most modern medical diagnostic testing in humans and animals.
  A microplate typically has 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 384 or 1536 sample wells arranged in a 2:3 rectangular matrix. Some microplates have been manufactured with 3456 or 9600 wells, and an "array tape" product has been developed that provides a continuous strip of microplates embossed on a flexible plastic tape.
  Each well of a microplate typically holds somewhere between tens of nanolitres to several millilitres of liquid. They can also be used to store dry powder or as racks to support glass tube inserts. Wells can be either circular or square. For compound storage applications, square wells with close fitting silicone cap-mats are preferred.
context_section_description: The earliest microplate was created in 1951 by a Hungarian, Dr. Gyula Takátsy, who machined six rows of 12 "wells" in Lucite.  However, common usage of the microplate began in the late 1980s when John Liner introduced a molded version. By 1990 there were more than 15 companies producing a wide range of microplates with different features. It was estimated that 125 million microplates were used in 2000 alone.  The word "Microtiter" is a registered trademark of Cooke Engineering Company, and Thermo Electron OY is the last listed owner of the trademark (U.S. Trademark 72,128,338.) It is now more usual to use the generic term "microplate".
  Other trade names for microplates include Viewplate and Unifilter (introduced in the early 1990s by Polyfiltronics and sold by Packard Instrument, which is now part of Perkin Elmer).
  In 1996, the Society for Biomolecular Screening (SBS), later known as Society for Biomolecular Sciences, began an initiative to create a standard definition of a microtiter plate. A series of standards was proposed in 2003 and published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on behalf of the SBS. The standards govern various characteristics of a microplate including well dimensions (e.g. diameter, spacing and depth) as well as plate properties (e.g. dimensions and rigidity) (typical dimension ~5″ × 3.33″), which allows interoperability between microplates, instrumentation and equipment from different suppliers, and is particularly important in laboratory automation. In 2010, the Society for Biomolecular Sciences merged with the Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) to form a new organisation, the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS). Henceforth, the microplate standards are known as ANSI/SLAS standards.
caption: A commercial microplate washer
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