Balle, Campbell, Keenan and Flygare demonstrated that the FTMW technique can be applied within a "free space cell" comprising an evacuated chamber containing a Fabry-Perot cavity. This technique allows a sample to be probed only milliseconds after it undergoes rapid cooling to only a few kelvins in the throat of an expanding gas jet. This was a revolutionary development because (i) cooling molecules to low temperatures concentrates the available population in the lowest rotational energy levels. Coupled with benefits conferred by the use of a Fabry-Perot cavity, this brought a great enhancement in the sensitivity and resolution of spectrometers along with a reduction in the complexity of observed spectra; (ii) it became possible to isolate and study molecules that are very weakly bound because there is insufficient energy available for them to undergo fragmentation or chemical reaction at such low temperatures. William Klemperer was a pioneer in using this instrument for the exploration of weakly bound interactions. While the Fabry-Perot cavity of a Balle-Flygare FTMW spectrometer can typically be tuned into resonance at any frequency between 6 and 18 GHz, the bandwidth of individual measurements is restricted to about 1 MHz. An animation illustrates the operation of this instrument which is currently the most widely used tool for microwave spectroscopy.