The UC Berkeley Library version of the scanning machine. The machine is shown loaded with three cylinders. During a scan the probe begins at the left and is moved to the right in 1.8mm steps using precision motion controls. Because the probe is all the way to the right in this image, it is shown at the end of a scan. The black table is "floating" on pneumatic isolators that keep a layer of air between the workbench and the white table underneath. This prevents small vibrations, even those which may not be palpable or perceptible to humans, from vibrating the system and effecting measurements.
A close up of the probe (the black cylinder at the right of the image) and a cylinder loaded on the machine (the brown cylinder on the left of the image). The probe shines a white light that is 1.8 mm wide (visible as the white line on the cylinder) and analyzes the intensity and color of reflected light to find the height of 180 points on a surface.