History and Innovation

For more than 90 years, scientists and clinicians have turned to us for answers to tough challenges, and found them, time and again. That’s because our actions—throughout the organization, at every level—are guided by our singular goal to relentlessly reimagine healthcare, one diagnosis at a time.

Today, Beckman Coulter Diagnostics uses the Danaher Business System (DBS) for continuous improvement, and we remain as one of only a few companies in our industry with full capacity to design, develop, manufacture, sell, and service our products and solutions.

Recent Innovations

DxI9000-history
DxI 9000 Access Immunoassay Analyzer
Your time matters. Create more of it to focus on what matters most. This immunoassay analyzer takes diagnostics to the next level.
DxC 500 AU analyzer
DxC 500 AU
Optimize your operations, protect your productivity, and trust your results.
Scopio Full-Field Digital Cell Morphology
Scopio Labs X100 and X100HT
Full-Field Peripheral Blood Smear Application is the first fully digital platform that replaces the manual microscope.

Committed to Reimagining Diagnostics

At Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, we continue to challenge the conventional, bringing advanced solutions, unparalleled testing sensitivity, and novel biomarkers to laboratories, clinicians, and the patients they serve.

Our History

The history of our company is a history of innovation spanning 90 years.

From a small operation in the rear of a garage in Pasadena, California, to its recognition today as a world leader in clinical diagnostics and life science research, our company owes its success to three men of vision who revolutionized science and medicine: Arnold O. Beckman, Ph.D., and brothers Wallace and Joseph Coulter.

About Dr. Beckman

On the American west coast, our company’s story begins with a groundbreaking, yet simple, invention by Dr. Arnold O. Beckman in the early 1930s. He found a solution for determining the precise measurement of pH in lemon juice—the acidimeter, or pH meter.

The manual, colorimetric methods in use at the time did not work well because the preservative used on lemons interfered with them. Instead, Dr. Beckman suggested a design for a vacuum-tube amplifier, combining principles of chemistry and electricity in a simple instrument that could be used by non-scientists.

The ‘Model T’ of Science


By 1935, Dr. Beckman sold the first commercial pH meter. Within 25 years, the pH meter, as well as the DU spectrophotometer—considered the scientific equivalent of the Model T—and the helipot potentiometer, found thousands of applications in science, industry and medicine. Dr. Beckman’s instruments simplified tedious laboratory procedures, increased analytical precision and transformed chemical analysis.


History and innovation Coulter image

Dr. Arnold O. Beckman
1900–2004

Invented and sold the first commercial acidimeter in 1935
to measure the pH of lemon juice, leading
to the success of more groundbreaking scientific instruments.



 

"When you're faced with the necessity to do something, that's a stimulus to invention.”


Dr. Arnold O. Beckman

History and innovation Coulter image

Wallace Coulter
1913–1998



Discovered and patented the "Coulter Principle”
in 1953 which launched the field of automated
hematology and forever changed the
practice of laboratory medicine.

About Wallace

Halfway across the country—in Chicago, Illinois—Wallace Coulter was hard at work on his own groundbreaking research.

In the early 1950s, he discovered the Coulter Principle, the most widely used method for counting and sizing microscopic particles suspended in a fluid. His method has been called the first viable basis for flow cytometry, and from it grew an industry that forever changed the world of diagnostic medical research.

Wallace and his brother, Joseph, founded Coulter Electronics in 1958 and relocated the business to Miami, Florida, in 1961.

2025-13902