Founding Richard Perkin was attending the
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study
chemical engineering, but left after a year to try his hand on
Wall Street. Still interested in the sciences, he gave public lectures on various topics.
Charles Elmer ran a firm that supplied
court reporters and was nearing retirement when he attended one of Perkin's lectures on
astronomy being held at the
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The two struck up a friendship over their shared interest in astronomy, and eventually came up with the idea of starting a firm to produce precision optics. Perkin raised US$15,000 from his relatives, while Elmer added US$5,000, and the firm was initially set up as a
partnership on 19 April 1937. Initially, they worked from a small office in
Manhattan, but soon opened a production facility in
Jersey City. They incorporated the growing firm on 13 December 1939. A further move to
Glenbrook in
Connecticut in 1941 was quickly followed by another move to
Norwalk, Connecticut, where the company remained until 2000. Perkin-Elmer responded with the Microprojector, which was essentially a large
photocopier system. The mask was placed in a holder and never touched the surface of the chip. Instead, the image was projected onto the surface. Making this work required a complex 16-element lens system that focussed a narrow range of wavelengths of light onto the mask. The remainder of the light from the 1,000 watt
mercury-vapor lamp was filtered out. This merger made Perkin-Elmer's annual sales rise to over US$200 million. The 32-bit computers were very similar to an IBM System/370, but ran the OS/32MT operating system. In 1976, Perkin-Elmer acquired
Wangco, a Los Angeles manufacturer of
tape drives for $30 million in a
stock swap. The Computer Systems Division had a large presence in
Monmouth County, New Jersey, with some 1,700 staff making it one of the county's largest private employers. Its plant in
Oceanport had 800 employees alone. By 1982, the Wollongong Group Edition 7 Unix and
Programmer's Workbench (PWB) were available on models such as the Perkin-Elmer 3210 and 3240 minicomputers. In 1985, the computing division of Perkin-Elmer was spun off as
Concurrent Computer Corporation, with the goal of giving it and the parallel processing product a clearer identification within the computer industry. This was done one in February 1986, with Perkin-Elmer retaining an 82 percent stake in Concurrent. In 1988, there was a merger between Concurrent Computer Corporation and
MASSCOMP; as part of the deal, Perkin-Elmer's share in Concurrent was bought out. At that point, Perkin-Elmer said they had culminated their multi-year process of exiting from computer market, allowing them to focus on their primary business segments. At the time, EG&G made products for diverse industries including automotive, medical, aerospace and photography. which included its offices in
Boston and
cord blood storage facility in
Kentucky near
Cincinnati. The company was renamed ViaCord. In 2001 Perkin Elmer acquired Packard Bioscience Inc from its majority shareholder, Dick McKernen. This acquisition also came with Agincourt Technologies Inc and consolidated Perkin Elmer's position in laboratory robotics, in particular, liquid handling robots which were to prove essential for the high-throughput sequencing needed for the Human Genome Project. In March 2008, PerkinElmer purchased Pediatrix Screening (formerly Neo Gen Screening), a laboratory located in
Bridgeville, Pennsylvania specializing in screening newborns for various inborn errors of metabolism such as
phenylketonuria,
hypothyroidism, and
sickle-cell disease. It renamed the laboratory PerkinElmer Genetics, Inc. In May 2011, PerkinElmer announced the signature of an agreement to acquire CambridgeSoft, and the successful acquisition of ArtusLabs. In September 2011, PerkinElmer bought
Caliper Life Sciences for US$600 million. In December 2014 PerkinElmer acquired Perten Instruments for US$266 million to expand in food testing. In January 2016, PerkinElmer acquired
Swedish firm Vanadis Diagnostics. In February 2016 PerkinElmer acquired Delta Instruments. In January 2017, the company announced it would acquire the
Indian in vitro diagnostic company, Tulip Diagnostics. In May 2017, the company acquired
Euroimmun Medical Laboratory Diagnostics for approximately US$1.3 billion. In 2018, the company acquired
Australian biotech company, RHS Ltd.,
Chinese manufacturer of analytical instruments, Shanghai Spectrum Instruments Co. Ltd., and
France-based company Cisbio Bioassays, which specializes in diagnostics and drug discovery solutions. In November 2020, PerkinElmer announced it would acquire Horizon Discovery Group for around US$383 million. In March 2021, PerkinElmer announced that the company has completed its acquisition of Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (Oxford Immunotec). In May of the same year, the business announced it would purchase Nexcelom Bioscience for $260 million and Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings PLC for $155 million. In June the company announced it would acquire SIRION Biotech, a specialist in viral vector gene delivery methods. In July the business announced it would acquire
BioLegend for $5.25 billion.
Acquisition history •
PerkinElmer (Est. 1935, modern company formed from EG&G Inc. purchase of Perkin-Elmer, Analytical Instruments Division) •
Applied Biosystems (Merged 1992) • PerSeptive Biosystems. (Acq. 1997) • Spectral Genomics • Improvision • Evotec-Technologies • Euroscreen • ViaCell • Avalon Instruments • Packard Bioscience Inc (Acq. 2003) • NTD Labs (Acq. 2006) • ViaCell, Inc. (Acq. 2007) • Pediatrix Screening (Acq. 2008) • CambridgeSoft (Acq. 2011) • ArtusLabs (Acq. 2011) •
Caliper Life Sciences (Acq. 2011) • Zymark (Acq. 2003) • NovaScreen Biosciences Corporation (Acq. 2005) • Xenogen Corporation (Acq. 2006) • Xenogen Biosciences • Cambridge Research & Instrumentation Inc. (Acq. 2010) • Xenogen Corporation (Acq. 2006) • Xenogen Corporation (Acq. 2006) • Perten Instruments (Acq. 2014) • Vanadis Diagnostics (Acq. 2016) • Delta Instruments (Acq. 2016) • Tulip Diagnostics (Acq. 2017) • Euroimmun Medical Laboratory Diagnostics (Acq. 2017) • RHS Ltd (Acq. 2018) • Shanghai Spectrum Instruments Co. Ltd (Acq. 2018) • Cisbio Bioassays (Acq. 2018) • Horizon Discovery Group (Acq. 2020) • Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (Acq. 2021) • Nexcelom Bioscience (Acq. 2021) • Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings PLC (Acq. 2021) • SIRION Biotech (Acq. 2021) •
BioLegend (Acq. 2021) • BioLegend Japan KK • BioLegend UK Ltd • BioLegend GmbH == Programs ==