The Mighty Mircoscope (or Monsanto's Mighty Microscope, as it was known under Adventure Thru Inner Space's Monsanto sponsership) was the centerpiece of the ex Disneyland dark ride Adventure Thru Inner Space. The Mighty Microscope allowed the Omnimovers of the attraction (called Atommobiles) to enter the main show area.
History
The Mighty Microscope has been said to have been designed on a lunchroom napkin by a world-famous Disney Imagineer. The entire structure has been said to have been created out of concrete. The folklore history of the Mighty Microscope was the Monsanto scientists spent millions of dollars to reverse the normal process of a microscope by instead of magnifying images to shrink images. Soon enough, the technology progressed to shrink people who enter the microscope.
Monsanto ended their sponsership in 1983 and all Monsanto references (except for a select few) were removed. The Mighty Microscope during the Monsanto drop did get some enhancements. The red "M" logo for Monsanto was removed from the side of the structure. The Monsanto ownership of the Mighty Microscope was dropped in the script. For unknown reasons, the microscope recieved an unnatural tip at the end of it.
Transformation Into Star Tours
Adventure Thru Inner Space was closed in 1985 for the first version of Star Tours, a Star Wars based motion simulator. The Mighty Microscope had to be removed to make way for the queue area StarSpeeder 3000, and disassemblers couldn't saw it out due to it being concrete. So, it was imploded on itself unbenounced to guests seeing the construction on the PeopleMover.
The Mighty Microscope can be seen in the 70 mm on-ride film that the motion is set to. In the mantinence bay, just after the boom is moved out of the way of the StarSpeeder, behind the control tower, is a replica of the Mighty Microscope. If you look hard enough, you can also see mini Atommobiles moving in the glass tube.