What was 'hot' in Chromatography 30 years ago?

[chromatographer1]

Karen,

Were you using Spectra-Physics 4700? Minigrators too? Reports were a strip of paper listing peaks and areas.

Drawing baselines was a dream in 1982, but they came soon after.

Rodney George

[Karen01]

Karen,

Were you using Spectra-Physics 4700? Minigrators too? Reports were a strip of paper listing peaks and areas.

Drawing baselines was a dream in 1982, but they came soon after.

I was doing preparative work on an analytical mass scale back then so I did not need to integrate the peaks and was using a strip chart to document the chromatography...

But on the job before that in 1980 where I was doing routine HPLC and GC quantitation in a tox lab on patient samples, I was drawing baselines and determining concentration by measuring peak height with a ruler from strip charts.

- Karen

[dpr]

I'm approaching 35yrs service on the same site/lab (although we've moved buildings a few times).

When I started the Varian 2700 was the workhorse GC but the latest 3700s' were being introduced.

Oh how I remember the exposed capacitor in the electrometer tray of the 2700.
Curling your fingers underneath as the draw was pulled forward could be a shocking experience.

(I think we still have an Aerograph in the back of the store somewhere....)

ppq and carbowax 20M columns along with some mol. sieve were most columns

Data run on a HP3352 with a teletype printer.

With the 3700 came twin columns and running A-B to balance baselines on temperature programs. HP3357 data system and our first capillary GC in the early 80s' a 5890.

I know reproducability is better, detection levels are much lower et al....
But I still miss (if only a little) spending the odd nightshift packing and preparing a set of matched column for use.

From the above ramblings.....

I'd say the introduction of the 5890 in the early 80's was a significant event.

[GasMan]

dpr

I would be interested for which company you are working for. I could be the person that installed your 3352 system. You can contact me at gasman41@gmx.de

Gasman

[MaryCarson]

In 1982 I was using a Beckman 120B amino acid analyzer (nearly as old as I was at the time, so probably does not qualify as "hot") to do reaction kinetics of enzymatic hydrolysis of synthetic polypeptides. I have fond (not!) memories of setting up a cot so I could make injections 'round the clock. No autosamplers back then for grad students. Lots of fun to pack the column with Dowex, but not nearly as much fun as making up and transferring 8L of ninhydrin in DMF by positive gas pressure.

Integrating peaks meant counting dots.

I believe there was a Milton-Roy pump driving the 120B.