How many of you caught the recent American Industrial Hygiene Conference? What struck me, since we are in the gas detection business was that there were more than thirty exhibiting companies selling portable, confined entry gas detection instruments.

Haven't we made any progress since 1975, when Gastech, Energetics Science, and Interscan were the only companies selling portable direct reading toxic gas instruments? At that point, these instruments were substitutes for detector tubes, and that was great, because things were just starting. However, soon after, Energetics Science and Intencan came out with continuous monitoring systems. The idea was that gas detection would be like process monitoring.

Whatever happened to the systems business? Everyone is trying to sell portables, because portables are easier to sell! Isn't it time that we stop doing "survey" work and start attending to the business of really monitoring?

Granted, that would actually require some applications engineering and some product knowledge, but what the heck? As they used to say in ancient Greece, it's time we separated the men from the boys.