Establishments in this industry are primarily engaged in manufacturing laboratory apparatus and furniture. The main products of this industry include baths and melting point apparatus, laboratory furniture such as furnaces and ovens, component parts and accessories for instruments, and centrifuges.
This category includes establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing industrial instruments and related products for measuring, displaying (indicating and/or recording), transmitting, and controlling process variables in manufacturing, energy conversion, and public service utilities. These instruments operate mechanically, pneumatically, electronically, or electrically to measure process variables such as temperature, humidity, pressure, vacuum, combustion, flow, level, viscosity, density, acidity, alkalinity, specific gravity, gas and liquid concentration, sequence, time interval, mechanical motion, and rotation.
Totalizing fluid meters measure fluids in quantity terms (such as gallons or cubic feet) and indicate total fluid volume rather than the rates of flow indicated by the flow meters used in industrial process control. The most common type of totalizing fluid meter is the positive-displacement meter, which operates by allowing the fluid to enter a chamber where the force of fluid motion causes a diaphragm, disk, vane, or other element to move or rotate.
Laboratory analytical instruments manufactured by this industry were used to conduct physical and chemical analyses. Major product groups included clinical laboratory, chromatographic, and spectrophotometric instruments, and mass spectrometers.
Companies in this industry manufacture a plethora of devices, including weapon-firing control mechanisms, optical laser-sighting systems, binoculars, borescopes, camera lenses, contour projection apparatus, gun sights, opera glasses, interferometers, microscopes, telescopes, periscopes, and spyglasses. Most devices in this industry use lenses.
This industry is comprised of companies primarily engaged in manufacturing a multitude of miscellaneous monitoring instruments. Major industry product segments include aircraft engine instruments; nuclear radiation detection and monitoring instruments; commercial, geophysical, meteorological, and general-purpose instruments and equipment; and physical properties testing and inspection equipment.
The first medical instruments of precision were used in the seventeenth century. Not until the eighteenth century was surgery recognized as a specific science.
In the late 1990s, surgical appliance and supplies manufacturers hoped to benefit from the solid market growth that had characterized the industry for over two decades. However, several issues clouded the industry's future: slow product approvals from the Food and Drug Administration, the potential overhaul of the U.S.
Essential to the practice of dentistry, the dental equipment and supply industry represents a modestly sized market and, in terms of sales, is considered to be one of the smallest industries, compared to the other medical supply and equipment industries. It is also an industry of expected growth due to increases in the cost of dental care, baby boomers taking better care of both their teeth and their children's teeth, and technological advances in dental equipment such as advanced root canal procedure machines, less expensive oral cameras, and the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of Perioglass, a surface-active, bone-grafting material.
Firms in this industry engage primarily in manufacturing irradiation apparatus and tubes for applications such as medical diagnostic, medical therapeutic, industrial, research, and scientific evaluation.
In the late 1990s, the electromedical and electro-therapeutic apparatus industry had 458 establishments. These establishments shipped $13.5 billion worth of goods in 2000, compared to $11.5 billion in 1997.
The ophthalmic goods industry was marked by intense competition among its major players in the early 2000s, not surprisingly considering the potential market to be conquered. About 159 million people in the United States require some type of vision correction.
This classification includes establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing photographic apparatus, equipment, parts, attachments, and accessories utilized in both still and motion photography. Also covered in this classification are establishments primarily involved in manufacturing photocopy and microfilm equipment, blueprinting and diazotype (white printing) apparatus and equipment, sensitized film, paper, cloth, and plates, and prepared photographic chemicals.
The watch and clock industry has always been small compared to other industries, and, since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the number of manufacturers has declined. This is due in large part to the movement, begun in the 1970s, of watch parts manufacture from the continental United States to offshore facilities.