From London to Morse via Binnig, Quate, and Gerber

In their landmark paper introducing the atomic force microscope [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{56}, 930 (1986)], Binnig, Quate, and Gerber presciently anticipated that the technique would ultimately be capable of probing interactions running the gamut from weak van der Waals interactions to strong covale