What Makes Cilia and Sperm Tails Beat?

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Abstract
Since Leeuwenhoek's account of the swimming movements of spermatozoa (1677) and the description of ciliated epithelia by Purkinje and Valentin,1 biologists have been intrigued by the mechanism of motility of cilia and flagella. Internal structure could not ordinarily be resolved by the light microscope in these minute cell processes, but Jensen2 and Ballowitz3 suggested a fibrillar internal organization from chance observation of an apparent fraying of tips of occasional sperm tails and cilia damaged in preparation. More than half a century passed before introduction of the electron microscope made it possible to verify their impressions. Manton,4 examining dissociated flagella of . . .