Test & Measurement 2010 Catalogue - CHAUVIN ARNOUX - #2

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More information at www.chauvin-arnoux.com history An amazing story! Every story starts somewhere. The story of the Chauvin Arnoux company as an inventor and manufacturer of measurement instruments since 1893 is rich in developments and innovations. Today, its products bear witness to and reflect the sociological and technological changes and the industrial innovations which marked the previous century. A fascinating story that explains why and how Chauvin Arnoux's image and personality evolved... in two colours. Black and yellow It is often said that at the root of knowledge is language, or that the origin of an innovation was an idea,… yet it is the individual, the person, who is really the source of knowledge and discoveries. This also applies to electricity, which was not invented in the 19th century, but discovered in the 6th century BCE by a Greek philosopher and scientist named Thales, the first person to note the electrostatic properties of amber. From the beginning of the 19th century, there was the yellow of amber. Then manufactured goods began to include the yellow of brass and copper, materials used in measurement instruments, either for the casings of galvanometers or for the connections of electrical measurement instruments. Beige was also introduced with the use of varnished wood in the casings, while black was reserved for the instruments' dials. Right from the start in 1893, the contrast between black and the yellow of varnished wood soon became the norm for the measurement instruments produced by Chauvin Arnoux. In a relatively short time, between 1900 and 1936, with the development of new technologies and new techniques for working materials, yellow brass began to be used with black Bakelite, eventually spreading to nearly all our instruments. Already known for its sense of design and the combination of its original colours; yellow brass and black, in its measurement instruments, Chauvin Arnoux reproduced these colours in its first corporate logo in 1927. In the 1940s, many measurement instruments only used black or black and the silver-grey of ferrous metals, sometimes painted. Chauvin Arnoux adapted its original visual identity to suit the fashions of the time, which also corresponded to technical criteria for safety, life-span extension or weight considerations linked to the metal and the manufacturing process used. The 1950s saw the arrival of rubber-like materials, used for the bases of portable instruments, and subsequently for the shockproof sheaths made of black neoprene, first designed and patented by Metrix® and Chauvin Arnoux in 1958. These shockproof sheaths later became widely used on the handheld instrument market. Page z 2 1895 reflection galvanometer The calibration potentiometer dating from 1900 was used with a standard battery and a galvanometer like the one shown above. Logo on the company's former main gate