The possibility of gas chromatography (GC) was first mentioned in 1941, in the famous paper by A.J.P. Martin and R.L.M. Synge. When dealing with liquid-liquid partition chromatography, they predicted that

Leslie S. Ettre

However, at that time, nobody picked up this suggestion and it was 10 years until Martin, now with A.T. James, demonstrated the possibility of gas-liquid partition chromatography (2,3). They worked in the biochemical field and demonstrated the application of the technique by separating and quantitatively determining the components of a C₁-C₁₂ fatty acid mixture. The importance of GC was recognized almost immediately by petroleum and petrochemical laboratories, which faced the daily challenge of analyzing complex hydrocarbon mixtures. However, the basic difference between liquid chromatography (LC) and GC became apparent: while classical LC could be carried out in the laboratory by practically everybody using the usual laboratory set-ups, GC required components that were not among the standard laboratory equipment of the time. Companies with large research laboratories usually had mechanical shops capable of constructing the required sophisticated systems. Indeed, the first gas chromatographs were built by the major petrochemical laboratories such as Shell or British Petroleum; however, smaller laboratories did not have the means to construct and build their own systems. Therefore, it soon became obvious that the immense potential of GC could only be fully exploited if proper instruments became available.

A couple of British companies (Griffin & George, London, UK, and Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Co., Manchester, UK) tried to provide gas chromatographs soon after the publication of James and Martin's paper. However, they did not have the resources for more fundamental development work, and their instruments were not much different from a self-constructed laboratory set-up. The field soon was taken over by American companies, which gained experience in electronics and optics and in producing high-precision systems to fulfill the need of the Allied military during World War II. The two companies introducing gas chromatographs almost simultaneously in the spring of 1955 (three years after the publication of James and Martin) were the Burrell Corporation (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and the Perkin-Elmer Corporation (Norwalk, Connecticut).

The Burrell Instruments Burrell Technical Supply Corporation was founded after World War I to supply gas analysis equipment. In 1943, it introduced a system for the determination of the components of natural gas by selective adsorption-desorption. This was the so-called Turner-Burrell Adsorption Fractionator and was based upon the work of Nelson C. Turner (4,5). It was a fairly complicated, floor-standing machine, and its use was very tedious: one analysis took at least 8 h and required a 2-4 L gas sample. In subsequent years, the instrument was simplified somewhat, reducing analysis time to 1-3 h: the result was the so-called Fracton, introduced in 1953 (6).