By Stephanie on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 10:32 am:

I have a friend reviewing a book. The author defines HPLC as "high precision liquid chromatography". I did a search on yahoo, and found several references to HPLC as "high precision liquid chromatography". I have been working in chromatography for over 15 years, and I have never heard of this definition. Is it a commonly used term in some field of study? I appreciate any insights. Thanks.

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By tom jupille on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 12:30 pm:

The acronym was coined about 35 years ago to distinguish the then-new "instrumental" approach to LC from the original (no called "classical" or "open -column") LC.

Officially (according to IUPAC or ASTM), it's all just "LC". Unofficially, interpretations include:
- High Performance LC
- High Pressure LC
- High Precision LC
- High-Price LC
- Highly Perplexing LC
- any others that I'm missing?

Before Hewlett-Packard spun off Agilent, I even heard one of their salesmen claim ...

... well, never mind, you get the picture.

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By Stephanie on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 02:47 pm:

Thanks for the reply. I had always thought that the original distinction between open column chromatography and the new HPLC was "high pressure LC", then as the technique grew, the gains in efficiency and speed produced the name "high performance LC". You left out

high patience LC
hocus pocus LC

in your definitions. ;-) Stephanie

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By tom jupille on Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 11:14 am:

LOL!

I'll make sure I add those two to the list.

Thanks!

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By SAM on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 01:38 am:

With the new instrumentation from Waters, we are even talking nowadays about UPLC as Ultra performance liquid chromatography...
Sam