Speaker 1: Let's get in test with technology with tex stuff from
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there be one, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strick. And when last we left you,
Speaker 1: there were two companies that were rising in prominence in
Speaker 1: various forms of instrumentation, but had as of yet absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to do with one another. Yes, they were kind
Speaker 1: of like those that those awkward boys and girls at
Speaker 1: the high school dance standing as far apart from each
Speaker 1: other in the dance floor as they possibly could be.
Speaker 1: They were science ships passing in the night. Yes. So
Speaker 1: we had Perkin Elmer, known for creating scientific instrumentation with
Speaker 1: lots of syllables that make me fall over myself. And
Speaker 1: then we have E. G and G, a group of
Speaker 1: M I T. Brainy acts who were really focused on
Speaker 1: high speed photography and other instrumentation. So when last we
Speaker 1: left off, we were just coming up on nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: or when E. G and G really gets involved in
Speaker 1: the space race. That's right, um. They produced the light
Speaker 1: beacons that were launched into space on board the Gemini spacecraft,
Speaker 1: or the Gemini spacecraft if you're one of those folks
Speaker 1: from NASA who insisted on pronouncing it that way. I've
Speaker 1: never heard that. That's amazing. You have to watch the
Speaker 1: old videos. I I say jim and I I refused
Speaker 1: to say jiminy other than the fact that if you
Speaker 1: watch those old videos it's too many. You mean like
Speaker 1: the cricket. Uh. Yeah. So that same year, e G
Speaker 1: n G also conducts seismic mapping operations in the English
Speaker 1: Channel as part of a project to create an underwater
Speaker 1: tunnel connecting England to France. This is nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't actually see that underwater tunnel for many, many,
Speaker 1: many years, decades in fact, but it's really exciting to
Speaker 1: me that I had no idea that dated back that far.
Speaker 1: So that's really cool. In nineteen sixty five, e g
Speaker 1: MNG lists as a public company on the Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: They had actually already begun offering stock options common stock
Speaker 1: options over a counter back in nineteen sixty for fourteen
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents a share over the counterstock options.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know, yes, because they were technically public,
Speaker 1: but they weren't publicly listed on a stock exchange, so
Speaker 1: it was kind of an interesting example there. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, they created e G n G International Incorporated,
Speaker 1: which was a subsidiary of the overall company, and this
Speaker 1: was specifically to encompass all their ocean of graphic products
Speaker 1: and services. We talked in the last episode about how
Speaker 1: they had created underwater cameras and light sources and worked
Speaker 1: with Zack Costa. Yeah, that was really pretty cool. In
Speaker 1: that same year, the Atomic Energy commissioned the a c
Speaker 1: A sponsored construction of a technical services building in Nevada,
Speaker 1: specifically for E G and G. Use Wow. This division,
Speaker 1: sometimes known as Albuquerque Operations, would eventually encompass all kinds
Speaker 1: of military focused projects, including like landmine detection and ground
Speaker 1: air communications e MP simulation, uh, and a lot of
Speaker 1: whipment shielding projects for rugged environments. Yeah. I think e
Speaker 1: MP simulations mean that you need some good shielding there.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting stuff that that that, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: about it, this started as a company that was all
Speaker 1: about high speed photography and now they're looking into EMP
Speaker 1: simulations for the military. In fact, their relationship with the government.
Speaker 1: E G and G's relationship with the government would mean that, uh,
Speaker 1: it would get pretty complicated. You had entire divisions of
Speaker 1: the company that we're working in a more commercial aspect,
Speaker 1: and a large portion of the company that was working
Speaker 1: almost exclusively under government contract. That gets pretty complex later
Speaker 1: on too. Nineteen sixty seven, E G. M G goes
Speaker 1: on an acquisition rampage. It's like if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: one of those old game shows where you got to
Speaker 1: go on a shopping spree at the end of it
Speaker 1: and just run down the aisles and just shove stuff,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's kind of how I feel. E G
Speaker 1: and G win at this point. Yeah, because things weren't
Speaker 1: quite complicated enough, they needed to add all whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different corporations. Yeah, there were so many that we
Speaker 1: even we started to list them and then realize that
Speaker 1: this is just a list of names that aren't going
Speaker 1: to mean much to anyone who hasn't worked for one
Speaker 1: of those companies, because most of them are not companies
Speaker 1: that that most of us know just easily by name.
Speaker 1: And we ended up cutting the wall out because Yeah, Furthermore,
Speaker 1: I mean, this was seven and this would continue going
Speaker 1: on for the next several years. So nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: E G and G successfully test the Phoebus to A,
Speaker 1: which was a nuclear reactor for space propulsion. That's pretty cool, uh,
Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty nine, they contribute several electronic components
Speaker 1: to the Apollo program, which was also pronounced Apollo, So
Speaker 1: they didn't do anything fun with Ellen. It was not
Speaker 1: the Jimini jim anything. That's good. They contributed to the
Speaker 1: first successful use of nuclear explosives to recover deeply buried
Speaker 1: natural gas. That's cool. Also in that year, Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong's helmet would boast
Speaker 1: a transparent goal protective coding that was designed by Perkin Elmer.
Speaker 1: So now we're seeing E. G and G and Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer kind of sort of working together but not knowingly
Speaker 1: doing so, they're all working specifically for NASSA. But uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, just just just hints of things to come. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy three, E G and G supports Antarctic scientific
Speaker 1: research and also contributes instrumentation to the Pioneer ten space probe.
Speaker 1: Also that year, Perkin Elmer would acquire a company called
Speaker 1: inter Data, which was an early computer company, and thus
Speaker 1: begin getting into digitized components and controllers, which would overall
Speaker 1: make their equipment easier for people to use with minimal training. Yep.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy six, E G and G acquires Rheticon,
Speaker 1: which was a solid state imaging and integrated circuit production company.
Speaker 1: Uh so, you know, you can see where E. G
Speaker 1: and G is starting to look into the components that
Speaker 1: make up today's digital cameras, including charge coupled devices c
Speaker 1: c ds. That a sensor that's found in many, uh
Speaker 1: though not all digital cameras. And uh, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: there's an interesting note here about some more space stuff, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that you're Perkin Elmer. One of their mass spectrometers went interplanetary.
Speaker 1: It was one of the instruments that went to Mars
Speaker 1: with the with the Viking Lander. That's so freaking awesome.
Speaker 1: Ninety seven. Okay, here's the big one, guys. This is
Speaker 1: going to take up a large part of our episode
Speaker 1: because this is the the big blunder really that that
Speaker 1: comes in here. This is when Perkin Elmer wins a
Speaker 1: contract to work on components for the Hubble space telescope
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen seventy seven. If you happen to
Speaker 1: know your history of the Hubble space telescope, it might
Speaker 1: surprise you to know that it all begins back in
Speaker 1: the late seventies because it wouldn't launch until Yeah. So
Speaker 1: now Perkin Elmer's focus ha ha was on the optical
Speaker 1: telescope assembly. There's a note in here that the pun
Speaker 1: is not intended, and I think you're lying. It's totally intended. Now.
Speaker 1: It wasn't intended when I was writing it, but then
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm totally intending it. Intention has changed.
Speaker 1: But yes, their their focus was on the optical telescope
Speaker 1: assembly and the fine guidance system. These are two separate
Speaker 1: systems that they were working on. And so here's the
Speaker 1: highlights of what the Hubble Space Telescope was all about
Speaker 1: and what the problem was. So the purpose of the
Speaker 1: Hubble Space Telescope was to take astronomical measurements and observations
Speaker 1: outside of the Earth's atmosphere, right, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of of of stuff, including air and clouds and moisture
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other other just things that get
Speaker 1: in the way of your instruments when you're trying to
Speaker 1: look at really distant stars. And it's also all that
Speaker 1: stuff can act as a filter and block certain types
Speaker 1: of radiation that you might want to be able to
Speaker 1: study things like X rays and gamma rays. Now we're
Speaker 1: glad that our atmosphere does this, because life would not
Speaker 1: really be possible if we didn't have that protective layer. Right,
Speaker 1: it's excellent, but it does mean that making observations from
Speaker 1: the ground is very tricky. So what do you do, Well,
Speaker 1: why not put a telescope outside the atmosphere in Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the reason that NASA decided to to pursue
Speaker 1: this idea, the Hubble Space Telescope. So here's how it works.
Speaker 1: In general, it uses mirrors to direct light to one
Speaker 1: or more of several scientific instruments that are contained within
Speaker 1: the telescope, and then those instruments analyze the light that
Speaker 1: comes in. So those mirrors are incredibly important, right. They
Speaker 1: have to have a very specific way of focusing that
Speaker 1: light so it hits the sensors just right. That the
Speaker 1: mirror shape and the electronics that are used to guide
Speaker 1: them are very critical. Yeah, because if it's not focusing
Speaker 1: the light, then you're not getting really good images. So
Speaker 1: Perk and Elmer worked on the mirrors for the optical
Speaker 1: telescope assembly, and they had to build the structure for
Speaker 1: it and the supporting systems, then assemble all of them
Speaker 1: and to test it before it was sent into space.
Speaker 1: It's the testing part that met with some criticisms, I
Speaker 1: would say. So. The telescope's launch met with several delays.
Speaker 1: All right. The original date was October launch, but that
Speaker 1: did not happen. No, in January of six for those
Speaker 1: of us who are old enough to remember, we had
Speaker 1: the horrible tragedy of the Challenger disaster, and that set
Speaker 1: back the entire space industry by several months, right right,
Speaker 1: All of NASSO basically bent itself to figuring out why
Speaker 1: this tragedy had happened and how it can be prevented
Speaker 1: in the future exactly. So then, uh, it gets pushed
Speaker 1: back over and over again. It wouldn't actually launch until April,
Speaker 1: and once it was an orbit, it immediately started taking pictures,
Speaker 1: whereupon everyone realized something was not right. Yeah, they weren't
Speaker 1: as crisp as they needed to be. They weren't. There
Speaker 1: was this notion that the images they would get back
Speaker 1: from the hubble we're going to be a certain level
Speaker 1: of clarity and crispness. And they were not nearly crisp enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't awful, but they were blurry, and
Speaker 1: there was some confusion at first as to why that was,
Speaker 1: and eventually they determined that the problem was Hubble's primary mirror,
Speaker 1: which had been pollished over the course of an entire years.
Speaker 1: How big and delicate the thing is, it had something
Speaker 1: called a spherical aberration. It means that that the curve
Speaker 1: on it was was very slightly off. Yeah, like we're
Speaker 1: talking about the thickness the similar larity of a thickness
Speaker 1: of one of a sheet of paper. So if you
Speaker 1: look at that and you were to take a sheet
Speaker 1: of paper, divide it fifty times equally, one of those
Speaker 1: would be the difference in curvature that it was versus
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to be. But but even that
Speaker 1: small difference meant that the light bouncing off of it
Speaker 1: was being focused on a very slightly different point than
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be, right, So that meant that
Speaker 1: the the center, the light that was hitting the center
Speaker 1: was hitting one part of the sensor, and the light
Speaker 1: that was hitting the edges of the mirror was hitting
Speaker 1: a slightly different focal point. So no matter why however
Speaker 1: you align the mirror, you were never going to get
Speaker 1: the perfect image because the center and the edges were
Speaker 1: out of alignment of the mirror itself, and so how
Speaker 1: do you fix this? Well, they decided to use what
Speaker 1: they called the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure they named it just so they could get
Speaker 1: the acronym co star. So CO star was a series
Speaker 1: of ten smaller mirrors that intercepted the reflected light from
Speaker 1: the primary mirror and then corrected it for that spherical aberration.
Speaker 1: So they had to go up there and then do
Speaker 1: some very delicate surgery on the Hubble Space telescope in orbit.
Speaker 1: All right, This all took place in in December of
Speaker 1: nine three UM. The installation required eleven months of training
Speaker 1: and five days of spacewalks once they actually got up there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about it because you know, you're in
Speaker 1: those giants space suits, right, you have very little mobility,
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of flexibility. It's it's tough.
Speaker 1: There's a limited period of time that you can be
Speaker 1: out there. It's incredibly high risk kind of operation and
Speaker 1: also just one that's just monumentally difficult. But they were
Speaker 1: able to do it. They were able to make this replacement. Now,
Speaker 1: it didn't come cheaply. The estimated costs were somewhere in
Speaker 1: the round of eighty six million dollars. It's a big
Speaker 1: mistake to have to fix. And then subsequent visits to
Speaker 1: the hubble involved replacing some of the old instrumentation on
Speaker 1: there with new versions of it that could by themselves
Speaker 1: account for that spherical aberration, meaning that co star eventually
Speaker 1: became obsolete because the instruments could correct for the error
Speaker 1: all on their own. They didn't need that extra set
Speaker 1: of mirrors. So that's kind of cool and in another
Speaker 1: prick and Elmer system would need a replacement. Uh you,
Speaker 1: I remember I mentioned that they had the fine guidance system.
Speaker 1: That was the second part of the systems they worked on.
Speaker 1: So fine guidance system was all about letting the hubble
Speaker 1: remained very stable while taking measurements and to very finely
Speaker 1: tune the telescope's directions that you're pointing exactly what you
Speaker 1: want to point at. They had to replace one of
Speaker 1: the three sensors, which a huge deal because that is
Speaker 1: you know, it's wear and tear like eventually, so and
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that was a faulty system, but this
Speaker 1: gave Perkin Elmer a pretty black eye at least in
Speaker 1: the space industry for a little while. Uh, and became
Speaker 1: kind of the stuff of legend in in the NASA chronicles.
Speaker 1: And it was a mistake that no one knew about
Speaker 1: until after the Hubble Space Telescope was in orbit, which
Speaker 1: was decades after Perkin Elmer had gotten the contract. Sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, anytime you've got a near billion dollar mistake,
Speaker 1: that's a government contract. That's not that's not looking great.
Speaker 1: It's pretty rough. So we've got a lot more to
Speaker 1: say here. But yeah, yeah, don't worry. It's if we
Speaker 1: don't have it's not sad ending books. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: a happy ending, we promise. But we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, so we're back,
Speaker 1: and now that we've got the Hubble hubbub out of
Speaker 1: the way, uh, we're gonna go back to nineteens sent eight.
Speaker 1: So we took a little bit of a diversion in
Speaker 1: order to cover all of Hubble. I thought it would
Speaker 1: have been too confusing to actually intersperse Hubble with the
Speaker 1: rest of this. It would admit a big mess. But
Speaker 1: N E. G and G. Remember them, that's the other
Speaker 1: company we had been talking about They joined the Department
Speaker 1: of Energy in Morgantown, West Virginia, in order to look
Speaker 1: at fossil fuel and alternative energy research, and that following years,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, E G and G would establish
Speaker 1: a new company called E. G and G Hydro Incorporated,
Speaker 1: to establish hydro electric power sources in the northeastern United States. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back in ninety eight, while we're time hopping around, UM,
Speaker 1: some E G G monitoring equipment was used aboard aircraft
Speaker 1: measuring the radiation levels at Three Mile Island. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was the nuclear power facility in the United States
Speaker 1: that accidentally released radioactive coolant in the form of steam,
Speaker 1: and so they needed to have ways of measuring the
Speaker 1: radiation without putting people in harm's way. Uh. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to me again just to see how far from the
Speaker 1: origin of eggs. Uh. You know, per this, we've come
Speaker 1: from high speed photography to Three Mile Islands and fossil
Speaker 1: fuels and alternative energy. That's kind of interesting. Nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: they also do something else with extreme photography. We're talking
Speaker 1: about setting up cameras around Mount St. Helen's, which erupted
Speaker 1: that year. Uh. An enormous eruption that that was, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, read your history books for that, because it
Speaker 1: was I remember living through uh the news reports on that,
Speaker 1: and it was always really dramatic. So they set up
Speaker 1: cameras to help the U. S. Government kind of keep
Speaker 1: an eye on what was going on, again, trying to
Speaker 1: do so without putting people in harm's way. Two NASA
Speaker 1: awards E G and G a contract to provide base
Speaker 1: operations support at Kennedy Space Center. Obviously a big contract there.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighty five and E. G and G
Speaker 1: scientists actually got to join the Space Shuttle crew for
Speaker 1: a mission. It was Mission fifty one b slash Space
Speaker 1: Lab three in order to study crystal growth in micro gravity.
Speaker 1: And I just wonder, like, how cool is it for
Speaker 1: you to say that you worked at a company where
Speaker 1: one of your co workers got to go out into
Speaker 1: space to do work. That's that's pretty cool. We can't
Speaker 1: say that, No, we can't. Uh, one of our former
Speaker 1: co workers went on a parabolic flight and got to
Speaker 1: have um um uh you know, the the simulated weightlessness.
Speaker 1: It's about as close as I think we've gotten, but
Speaker 1: it's still pretty neat. So N nine E G and G.
Speaker 1: Is awarded contracts to support the Department of Energies super
Speaker 1: conducting super collider project in Texas UM, which you know,
Speaker 1: super colliders are always awesome. Even when those projects don't
Speaker 1: ultimately finish, it's still nifty. In nineties, some of their
Speaker 1: components would play an integral role in the Department of
Speaker 1: Defenses global positioning satellites. Yeah, so we're talking super high
Speaker 1: tech and in it was a big, big year. So
Speaker 1: Perkin Elmer merged with a company called Applied Biosystems, which
Speaker 1: was founded by two Hewitt Packard employees, and that company
Speaker 1: designed and manufactured scientific instruments, the first one being a
Speaker 1: protein sequencer. In October of n Perkin Elmer agreed, along
Speaker 1: with Hughes Aircraft, to pay a twenty five million dollar
Speaker 1: fine to head off a government lawsuit regarding that Hubble
Speaker 1: mistake you talked about. Perkin Elmer's specific share of that
Speaker 1: would be fifteen million dollars, which, when you consider that
Speaker 1: the the price of the or the cost of the
Speaker 1: error was much higher than that, I guess they were
Speaker 1: getting off relatively easy. Yeah. I have no doubt whatsoever
Speaker 1: that the people at Perkin Elmer were trying very hard
Speaker 1: to make a good product just based upon the company's history.
Speaker 1: But it also I mean, they were under a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism saying that after all this time, when all
Speaker 1: that testing, you would think that that aberration would have
Speaker 1: revealed itself. And some people alleged that there were at
Speaker 1: least folks at Perkin Elmer who were aware of the
Speaker 1: problem but allowed it to go on anyway. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that
Speaker 1: was certainly in the allegations. Also, E G. And G
Speaker 1: got into the micro machining game in a partnership with
Speaker 1: the Institute of Microelectronics, National University of Singapore, so building
Speaker 1: lots of teeny tiny machine parts at this point in
Speaker 1: was another big year. Uh So that year Perkin Elmer
Speaker 1: reported revenues of more than one billion dollars. So they're
Speaker 1: not doing too bad for themselves despite all of this.
Speaker 1: Huw about how about that that fifteen million dollar uh
Speaker 1: fine might not seem so uh so monumental in comparison
Speaker 1: to a one billion dollar revenue. You never want to
Speaker 1: find obviously, but um and and a lot of that
Speaker 1: was coming from that from that life Life Sciences division
Speaker 1: that they had just recently m. Yeah, so life sciences
Speaker 1: was becoming a really big part of Perkin Elmer's portfolio.
Speaker 1: I mean before they were really in chemistry in general
Speaker 1: and inorganic chemistry in particular. And yeah, so now we've
Speaker 1: we're seeing them branch out. Meanwhile, E, G and G
Speaker 1: reorganizes into five operating segments, uh, and then almost immediately
Speaker 1: discontinues one of those five. They had a Department of
Speaker 1: Energy Support division, but with all of that stuff that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about for the past couple of decades, right,
Speaker 1: all the alternative energy stuff, all that. But what happened
Speaker 1: was they had made a bid on a particular contract,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, and the company ultimately decided that
Speaker 1: it made more sense to just fold the division than
Speaker 1: to continue trying to bid for these contracts. They still
Speaker 1: got government contracts in other ways, but not in energy anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then also something big happened just in world news, right,
Speaker 1: that was that that underwater tunnel between England and France, yep,
Speaker 1: the Chunnel, the Channel. I once had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: go on a trip underneath the channel, and I didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to take it. But this is really
Speaker 1: cool because you know, G and G was the company
Speaker 1: that did all that seismic mapping of the English Channel
Speaker 1: to try and study the possibility of having this underwater tunnel.
Speaker 1: So this is we're seeing it start to pay off
Speaker 1: decade later. Uh and in nine, E G MNG one
Speaker 1: government contracts to build advanced X ray and explosives detection
Speaker 1: systems for locations ranging from the Manchester Airport at the
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom to federal courthouses throughout the United States.
Speaker 1: So again really branching out, nineteen, the non governmental division
Speaker 1: of E G MNG purchases the Analytical Instruments division of
Speaker 1: Perkin Elmer for four and fifty two million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now they change the name or this is why
Speaker 1: we've been talking about E G and G and Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer for two episodes. You know, you've been waiting to
Speaker 1: find out how are these two companies involved, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that they occasionally worked on projects that came
Speaker 1: together in the form of the Apollo program. It's because
Speaker 1: the year in part of E G m G buys
Speaker 1: part of Perkin Elmer, and the new company is called
Speaker 1: Perkin Elmer, except it doesn't have a dash in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we probably should have mentioned that Perkin Elmer previously had
Speaker 1: a dash between Perkin and Elmer. Yes, imagine every single
Speaker 1: time that we have said the word Perkin Elmer previously
Speaker 1: in these two episodes, that we were saying Perkin Elmer
Speaker 1: but with a dash. Yeah, now we're saying Perkin Elmer
Speaker 1: with no dash, which obviously saved the company millions of
Speaker 1: dollars by eliminating that dash. Um. But now, seriously, they
Speaker 1: became Perkin Elmer. So what happened to the rest of
Speaker 1: the Perkin Elmer company. You know, only part of it
Speaker 1: was purchased by E. G and G. Right, the old
Speaker 1: company became PE Corporation, which was focused on that life
Speaker 1: sciences and biotechnology kind of stuff. Yeah, and also on genomics.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand, PE Corporation changes its name to
Speaker 1: apple Era, which was a kind of a portmanteau of
Speaker 1: Applied and Selera, which were parts of other companies they
Speaker 1: had acquired previously. Yes, and if you happen to listen
Speaker 1: to you forward thinking, you will know that Celera is
Speaker 1: a genetics and genomics company that in fact has very
Speaker 1: little to do with Selary, despite what it sounds like. Right,
Speaker 1: So we finally have this point now where we've got
Speaker 1: we've got Perkin Elmer. Uh, there was a brief time
Speaker 1: where Perkin Elmer and PE Corporation made it really really confusing.
Speaker 1: And plus you had you know, the the governmental parts
Speaker 1: of E G and G that still exists as well.
Speaker 1: Uh complicated issue. So from two thousand to two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, we had even more crazy corporate shenanigans going on.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a lot of a lot of purchases and
Speaker 1: acquisitions and change name changes. The name specifically Applied bios
Speaker 1: Biosystems got tossed around and capitalized and recapitalized in several
Speaker 1: different iterations. Yeah, it was changed from Applied Biosystems to
Speaker 1: like PE Biosystems, and then a year later changed back
Speaker 1: to Applied Biosystems and then eventually acquired by a totally
Speaker 1: different company. So yeah, we're this is why this is
Speaker 1: a really complicated topic. It's not just the technology, which
Speaker 1: all on its own is complex, but because we're talking
Speaker 1: about the really uh muddy and sometimes political world of
Speaker 1: commerce and how a company is more than just a
Speaker 1: single unit. It's made up of all these other divisions
Speaker 1: and subsidiaries. I think it's really messy really quickly. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were elements of some of these companies that had
Speaker 1: their own stock symbols, So you had divisions within one
Speaker 1: company that each were being publicly traded but in different ways.
Speaker 1: So that's unusual too, or at least unusual to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it may happen all the time, but it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where I was like, really,
Speaker 1: I think it's not entirely uncommon, but yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it shows how much I play the stock market. I
Speaker 1: I that stuff is just opaque to me. Okay, but
Speaker 1: so what exactly is Perkin Elmer no dash up to today? Wow?
Speaker 1: So much stuff? Okay. So Perkin Elmer also owns lots
Speaker 1: of other little subs of the eeries. When I say little,
Speaker 1: I've talked about multimillion smaller than Perkin Elmer, which is enormous.
Speaker 1: It's a two point two billion dollar company. So Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer is involved in things like stem cell research, has
Speaker 1: a subsidiary called via Cord that does that kind of work.
Speaker 1: Also genomics and diagnostics through a company called Signature Genomics.
Speaker 1: Also prenatal screening through Perkin Elmer Labs, slash nt D
Speaker 1: viral and bacterial DNA slash RNA isolation, chemical analysis, thermal analysis.
Speaker 1: This one's really cool, the thermal analysis because imagine that
Speaker 1: you are a giant manufacturing company and you work with
Speaker 1: a lot of different chemicals and you are trying to
Speaker 1: create a new product, but you're not entirely sure if
Speaker 1: your processes are going to work with the chemicals you
Speaker 1: want to use, Like you aren't really sure if your
Speaker 1: factories are going to explode or not, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: What thermal analysis does is run through the various processes
Speaker 1: at the same temperatures and conditions that you would have
Speaker 1: your production facilities to see what happens. So if toxins
Speaker 1: are let out, if there's anything dangerous, if the ultimate
Speaker 1: uh end product is not serviceable for some reason. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a prototyping for chemical manufacturing. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of neat. Uh. They've also got their
Speaker 1: hands and energy conservation UM and like green energy solutions
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and environmental monitoring and analysis that all
Speaker 1: like pollution and toxin detection kind of stuff. Food science, neutraceuticals,
Speaker 1: that's a word that they use, neutraceuticals. You guys, This
Speaker 1: is the best word I have ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen that until it showed up in the notes. Neutraceuticals.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they mean vitamins. Yeah, that that makes sense.
Speaker 1: They also are involved in creating forensic analytical lab equipment,
Speaker 1: so for law enforcement agencies and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and they do consumer product materials testing. So this is
Speaker 1: an other way where they try and help companies determine
Speaker 1: that their products are indeed non toxic. Very important. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're making toys for young kids, or or or
Speaker 1: cookware or comfiting or I mean basically anything that we
Speaker 1: come into contact with has to go through this sort
Speaker 1: of testing. UM and haza for having fewer things around
Speaker 1: us that cause cancer, right exactly. So this is the
Speaker 1: kind of company that builds the stuff that allows other
Speaker 1: companies to finish their products. It's one of those that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've never heard Park and Elmer before,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's not a big surprise, because
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not one of those that is usually
Speaker 1: direct to consumers and any kind of way unless you
Speaker 1: work with scientific lab equipment, in which case you may
Speaker 1: be really familiar with it. Yeah, So this has really
Speaker 1: been an interesting topic for us to cover because I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with Park and Elmer apart from I
Speaker 1: knew of it because the hubble hubbub, but that was
Speaker 1: all I had heard of. And I really wasn't familiar
Speaker 1: with a lot of the equipment because my my experience
Speaker 1: in chemistry, I remember doing titrations and that's about as
Speaker 1: much as I remember, and that didn't involve any any
Speaker 1: complex equipment. Yeah, my kind of experiences from like tenth
Speaker 1: grade in high school. Yeah, So it's it's been a
Speaker 1: while for each of us, and so it was kind
Speaker 1: of fun to go back and look at this stuff. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, material that I don't often look over, and
Speaker 1: it's fun to to explore that. So if any of
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for other fun topics we can cover,
Speaker 1: you know, something that you've always wondered about, even if
Speaker 1: you know maybe it's one of those things kind of
Speaker 1: like this this subject where it involves lots of different
Speaker 1: types of tech. Let us know. We like the challenge.
Speaker 1: Just give us a lot of heads up time, uh, Like, Hey,
Speaker 1: the anniversary is coming up next week of such and
Speaker 1: such company that's been around for four years. That might Yeah,
Speaker 1: we might not be able to get that out in time,
Speaker 1: but otherwise let us know. Send us a message. Our
Speaker 1: email is text up at Discovery dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter or handle at
Speaker 1: all three is tech stuff, hs W and Lauren and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com