[tullatulla]

Those have nothing to do with the microscope.

A STM is basically a very sharp needle flying just above the surface and measuring the tunneling current with a few volts applied at most. It's rather small, most space will be taken up by the vacuum chamber and cryostat.

Other electron microscopes (TEM or SEM) cannot resolve molecules / or would fry them with their high voltage/currents...

[kalimanzaro]

The article mentions that the race venue used to house the world's largest (traditional, HV) electron microscopes at one time. I thought it would be cool if these towers were actually for that but it seems likely the place is just a science museum of sorts now. Or maybe they are some sort of fancy (electrostatic) dust collector?

[tullatulla]

Oh yes you are right!

That's apparently part of the first 1MeV TEM. Should be the high voltage source for the electron gun. The electron optics were most likely magnetic, not electrostatic.

There is a whole movie about it:

https://images.cnrs.fr/en/video/1257

Later MeV TEMs looked very different, and are now replaced by aberration corrected tools...