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The objectives of the annual James L. Waters Symposium at Pittcon are
different from those of other symposia at either Pittcon or other
conferences. Waters, founder of the well-known Waters Associates, Inc.,
and currently president of Waters Business Systems, Inc., arranged with
the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) in 1989 to offer
an annual symposium at Pittcon to explore the origins, development, and
commercialization of scientific instrumentation of established and major
significance. The main goals were and still are to ensure that the early
history of this cooperative process be preserved, to stress the importance
of contributions of workers with diverse backgrounds, objectives and
perspectives, and to recognize some of the pioneers and leaders in the
field. Important benefits of these symposia are creation of awareness of
the way in which important new instruments and, through them, new fields
are created, and promotion of interchange among inventor, development
engineer, entrepreneur, and marketing organization. The topics of the
first nine Waters Symposia, beginning in 1990, were gas chromatography,
atomic absorption spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic
resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, high-performance liquid
chromatography, ion-selective electrodes, lasers in chemistry, and
immunoassay. Publication of the papers presented at the Waters Symposia is
a high priority of the SACP. The papers of the first symposium were
published in LC-GC Magazine and those of the next four symposia appeared
in Analytical Chemistry. The next four Waters Symposia were published in
this Journal: the sixth, on high-performance liquid chromatography,
appeared in the
January 1997 issue (pages 37-48); the seventh, on ion
selective electrodes, appeared in the
February 1997 issue (pages 159-182);
the eighth, on lasers in chemistry, was featured in the
May 1998 issue (pages 555-570);
and the ninth, on immunoassay, appeared in the
June 1999 issue (pages 767-792).
The topic of the tenth Waters Symposium, held in March 1999, was atomic
emission spectroscopy, and is featured in this issue of the Journal.
In the first paper, one of the pioneers recognized in the Symposium,
Richard Jarrell, comments on highlights in the development of
spectrochemical analysis. Additional highlights, with the emphasis on the
efficacy of various sources for atomic emission spectroscopy, are presented
by Gary Hieftje in the second paper. This is followed by a description of
the invention of the annular inductively coupled plasma source by the
inventor himself, Stanley Greenfield; this device proved to be a major
advance in atomic emission spectroscopy and related fields. The fourth
paper, by
R. F. Jarrell, F. Brech, and M. J. Gustafson, chronicles the
contributions of Thermo Jarrell Ash Corporation to the development and
marketing of atomic emission instrumentation, with brief mention of the
major contributions of Walter Baird's Baird Associates and Maurice Hasler's
Applied Research Laboratories. Finally, in the fifth paper
Samuel Houk
describes in lighthearted fashion his personal ups and downs in his
development of the important "hyphenated" technique, inductively coupled
plasma-mass spectrometry.
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