Where Did Ion Selective Electrodes Come From? The Story of Their Development and Commercialization

In 1967 and 1968, in a small refurbished warehouse in the unfashionalbe part of Cambridge, new "specific ion electrodes" were being invented, developed, patented, and released for sale at such a rate that insiders talked about the "Electrode of the Month Club". The need for such devices had existed for a long time, and the technology to use them (i.e., pH meters) had also been widely available. The literature was cluttered with tempting clues, inventions that were ignored, interesting routes that turned out to be dead ends, near misses, and electrodes that sounded wounderful but that no one could reproduce. In the usual portrayal of the progress of technology, one development neatly builds the groundwork for the next, and the historian, looking back, can show a logical progression of concepts and discoveries. This was not the way it was with ion-selective electrodes (ISEs), and even those of us who were deeply involved in it were surprised at the way it unfolded so rapidly and dramatically.