00:00:36 We've always been a very large user of Beckman instrumentation,

00:00:42 mainly because we found them to be leaders in the field in state-of-the-art methodology.

00:00:47 It's made a big difference in our critical patients because we get them in here all day long.

00:00:53 Could you just tell us what came up on the Astra?

00:00:55 It was a very low glucose on the patient.

00:00:57 He's diabetic, and I believe they're having a hard time monitoring him

00:01:04 because this morning he had a very high glucose, which means they probably gave him insulin.

00:01:09 Now it's very low.

00:01:10 How long did it take to get that reading after you put the sample in?

00:01:13 Oh, about a minute.

00:01:15 We immediately call the doctor because that's dangerously low.

00:01:20 I don't think there's anything on the market that is as fast as this.

00:01:24 And since it's been out in the field for about three years now, it's proven accuracy.

00:01:30 In other words, when you get an answer off of an Astra, you know that it's the correct answer.

00:01:36 Astra is a key product for Beckman Instruments

00:01:39 and a leading product of the company's largest business group.

00:01:43 Other businesses for the California firm include process instruments and controls

00:01:47 and electronic technologies.

00:01:49 Corporate Communications spoke with the people who manage Beckman

00:01:52 and asked them to talk about a business that's always been at the forefront of technology.

00:01:56 The health care part of our business in probably the last 8 or 10 years

00:02:01 has grown to twice the size what our company was in its first 30 years.

00:02:06 So it's fairly what you might call outstanding growth.

00:02:11 And that growth has come not only from the growth of the market,

00:02:14 but because the research that we've done has led to a flow of new products

00:02:19 which are just, well, they're outstanding products.

00:02:23 The instrument behind me is a scintillation counter,

00:02:26 and what it does is detect very sensitively the presence of radioactive molecules.

00:02:32 We make the tools for those who study biotechnology

00:02:36 and who unravel some of the secrets of the life processes

00:02:41 that allow us to have medicine and technology and medicine improve.

00:02:46 A lot of the research in various diseases and that sort of thing

00:02:49 are done with our Beckman centrifuges, Beckman spectrophotometers, scintillation counters.

00:02:54 There's a number of instruments that we make that are used in the research

00:02:58 that's done in the life processes.

00:03:01 The basic business is chemistry.

00:03:03 We make instrumentation to make analysis in chemistry,

00:03:06 so one must first understand the chemistry

00:03:09 and then apply it back into the engineering sciences that create instrumentation.

00:03:15 We were chosen as the one to provide the control system

00:03:19 for the energy plant that takes solar energy to generate electricity,

00:03:25 and we were chosen as the supplier of the computerized control system for that system

00:03:30 because it was the most modern in technology.

00:03:33 Pressures, temperatures, flows, liquid levels,

00:03:37 it processes these data and sends back out to the operating unit control signals

00:03:44 which actually control the operation of the process itself.

00:03:48 In the case of the MV8000, the process stream analyzers, the control equipment,

00:03:54 that's an economically justifiable piece of equipment that makes them money.

00:04:00 It makes their process more efficient.

00:04:02 It makes better quality product.

00:04:04 In the past, a refinery was normally built to accept crude oil from only one section of the world.

00:04:10 With the world's oil problem as it's developed,

00:04:13 refineries have had to be modified so that they can take crude oil from any place in the world,

00:04:18 and our equipment is finding ready application

00:04:20 in these revamping and modernization programs that are going on.

00:04:25 Beckman has been closely associated with the environmental activities dating back to 1954,

00:04:32 and our equipment became the standard of the industry

00:04:35 in measuring vehicle exhaust pollutants as well as environmental or ambient pollutants.

00:04:42 This little potentiometer is a very precision potentiometer,

00:04:47 and it is kind of unique, and it happens to be a very high volume,

00:04:53 handy trimmer used on printed circuit boards

00:04:58 that are used in almost every electronic application in the country.

00:05:03 Here's another one.

00:05:05 The size of the resistors and the multitude of circuits that are on this board

00:05:12 are probably ten times greater than the one I pointed to previously up here.

00:05:19 I'm kind of excited about this because it's a fun thing,

00:05:23 and it's also a good business, and that makes it kind of interesting.

00:05:28 People like working at Beckman,

00:05:30 and part of the reason for that, besides the nice climate,

00:05:34 is that the people at Beckman get a lot of satisfaction from their job.

00:05:38 They're working on things of importance to human health or human productivity.

00:05:44 They're in an environment of working with other professional, competent people,

00:05:48 and the management values the technology.

00:05:52 We have 12,000 employees, 10,000 in the United States and 2,000 overseas,

00:05:58 and to go biographical for a minute, when I came to the company,

00:06:01 we had 1,000 employees, and our sales were $10 million a year.

00:06:06 Now we do $10 million a week.

00:06:08 So in the time I've been here, we're 52 times or more the size we were.

00:06:12 So we're obviously on a growing pattern.

00:06:15 Being technology-driven, everything derives from that.

00:06:19 We have to have people that understand technology.

00:06:24 We have to have very strong scientific staffs and engineering staffs

00:06:30 because technology is nothing unless it's properly applied

00:06:33 through the engineering departments and the like.

00:06:35 Within its business groups, Beckman manufactures over 6,000 products.

00:06:40 Actually, all of Beckman's products have at least one thing in common,

00:06:44 that the results of research and development programs

00:06:46 started nearly 50 years ago with a juice from a lemon.

00:06:51 A classmate of mine had the problem of measuring the acidity of lemon juice

00:06:58 that had been heavily dosed with sulfur dioxide, and that's created problems.

00:07:04 And I suggested that he replace the delicate galvanometer

00:07:08 with a rugged vacuum tube voltmeter.

00:07:12 And then he asked me to build him such an instrument, and I did.

00:07:16 That is the first incident back there.

00:07:19 This pH meter, the first product of what came to be known as Beckman instruments,

00:07:23 was designed by Dr. Beckman in 1934.

00:07:26 He was then an assistant professor of chemistry

00:07:28 at the California Institute of Technology.

00:07:31 First headquarters of the company was a rented garage in Pasadena.

00:07:35 Along with the pH meter, other early successes for Dr. Beckman

00:07:39 included the helipot, which is a precision variable resistor

00:07:42 invented to improve the pH meter, and the spectrophotometer,

00:07:46 a pioneer instrument in automated chemical analysis.

00:07:50 That presence in the life sciences area,

00:07:53 through ultracentrifugation, spectrophotometers,

00:07:56 some of the basic products of the company,

00:07:59 gave us some insight into what very specialized instruments

00:08:03 would be required in life sciences research,

00:08:05 particularly as the age of molecular biology came on the scene 15, 20 years ago.

00:08:11 If you identify proteins, the important thing is the sequence

00:08:16 in which some 20 or so different amino acids appear,

00:08:20 and that sequence is the important characteristic

00:08:22 that determines the nature of the protein.

00:08:24 That was a very difficult job for a chemist to work out

00:08:28 until we came up following the work of Professor Edmonds in Australia

00:08:33 with an automatic instrument that, in fact,

00:08:36 chops off the end amino acid, determines what it is,

00:08:39 because it goes on to the next and chops it off teleautomatically.

00:08:42 So that speeded up the program so much.

00:08:45 Well, so our ultracentrifuge, our automatic amino acid analyzer,

00:08:51 and our automatic sequencer are the key.

00:08:55 They're the monkey wrenches and hammers and tongs, you see,

00:08:59 of the field of genetic engineering.

00:09:01 Let's just create what we need.

00:09:03 We have the capability, and I think the history of the last 17 years

00:09:08 has borne out that the capability is incredible

00:09:12 in terms of broad base of technology.

00:09:15 It's both broad and deep.

00:09:17 ♪

00:09:26 Behind us, the Beckman Auditorium was built in 1964,

00:09:31 and that's really a focal place for the whole community of Pasadena.

00:09:34 There are a good number of maybe 70 to 100 performances put on there.

00:09:40 Also behind me is the Mabel and Arnold Beckman Laboratories of Behavioral Biology.

00:09:47 Mrs. Beckman, too, is always by his side.

00:09:50 She's a major part of what he does.

00:09:53 His interest in the humanness of man

00:09:57 is carried through in the theme of this whole court behind me

00:10:01 with the Beckman Auditorium as its head.

00:10:03 It's called the Court of Man,

00:10:05 and on one side we have the Behavioral Biology Labs,

00:10:08 and on the other side is the Division of Humanities and Social Scientists.

00:10:12 It would be hard to separate Dr. Beckman and Caltech.

00:10:16 ♪

00:10:19 I try to run the business the way I like to run my own affairs.

00:10:23 I like to go out in the plant and say,

00:10:25 somebody asked me the other day what was the most rewarding thing

00:10:29 I've achieved after all these years.

00:10:32 One is, I think, the trust and respect

00:10:36 that our employees have for each other and for me.

00:10:39 That's the most valuable.

00:10:40 I can go out and be glad to talk to any employee.

00:10:43 And there's a very cordial, friendly relationship.

00:10:45 We do respect each other,

00:10:47 and that is part of the philosophy.

00:10:49 I hope we can continue. I'm sure we can.

00:10:51 ♪