How times change
Griffiths says in the introduction to Elementary particle physics,
If you were dealing with two macroscopic objects, and you wanted to know how they interact, you would probably begin by holding them at various separation distances and measuring the force between them. That’s how Coulomb determined the law of electrical repulsion between two charged pith balls, and how Cavendish measured the gravitational attraction of two lead weights. But you can’t pick up a proton with tweezers or tie and electron onto the end of a piece of string; they’re just too small.
Well, I guess to be fair, we call it “optical tweezer” but it looks nothing like actual tweezers. But if you want superficial similarity tweezers, there’s always atomic force microscopy, which uses cantilevers that, fundamentally and materially, isn’t that different from tweezers or any other long, slender objects.