The scanning tomographic acoustic microscope (STAM) was proposed in 1982 as a method of improving the resolution capability of the scanning laser acoustic microscope (SLAM) based on the principles of tomography. By modifying the SLAM with a quadrature detector, tomographic projections that contain both the amplitude and phase information of the scattered wavefield can be acquired. Subsequently, multiple projections acquired with different incident waves are combined using the "back-and-forth" propagation algorithm to form the tomographic reconstruction. The first STAM reconstructions have been obtained to experimentally demonstrate the superior resolution capability of the STAM over the SLAM. In this paper, the implementation of the STAM is described, and experimental reconstructions of multiple-layer specimens are demonstrated.