Test & Measurement - Chauvin-Arnoux i Skandinavien

historY
More information at www.chauvin-arnoux.com
Black
and
yellow
1895 reflection
galvanometer
An amazing story!
Every story starts somewhere.
The story of the Chauvin Arnoux company as an inventor and
manufacturer of measurement instruments since 1893 is rich in
developments and innovations. Today, its products bear witness
to and reflect the sociological and technological changes and the
industrial innovations which marked the previous century.
A fascinating story that explains why and how Chauvin Arnoux's
image and personality evolved... in two colours.
The calibration
potentiometer dating from
1900 was used with a
standard battery and a
galvanometer like the one
shown above.
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It is often said that at the root of
knowledge is language, or that the origin
of an innovation was an idea,… yet it is the
individual, the person, who is really the source
of knowledge and discoveries. This also applies
to electricity, which was not invented in the
19th century, but discovered in the 6th century BCE
by a Greek philosopher and scientist named Thales,
the first person to note the electrostatic properties
of amber.
From the beginning of the
19th century, there was the
yellow of amber. Then manufactured
goods began to
include the yellow of brass
and copper, materials used
in measurement instruments,
either for the casings of galvanometers
or for the connections
of electrical measurement
instruments. Beige was
also introduced with the use of
varnished wood in the casings,
while black was reserved for the
instruments' dials. Right from the
start in 1893, the contrast between
black and the yellow of varnished
wood soon became the norm for
the measurement instruments produced
by Chauvin Arnoux.
In a relatively short time, between 1900
and 1936, with the development of new
technologies and new techniques for working
materials, yellow brass began to be used
with black Bakelite, eventually spreading to
nearly all our instruments.
Already known for its sense of design and the
combination of its original colours yellow brass
and black, in its measurement instruments,
Chauvin Arnoux reproduced these colours in its first
corporate logo in 1927.
Logo on the company's former main gate
In the 1940s, many measurement instruments only
used black or black and the silver-grey of ferrous
metals, sometimes painted.
Chauvin Arnoux adapted its original visual identity to
suit the fashions of the time, which also corresponded
to technical criteria for safety, life-span extension
or weight considerations linked to the metal and the
manufacturing process used.
The 1950s saw the arrival of rubber-like materials,
used for the bases of portable instruments, and
subsequently for the shockproof sheaths made of
black neoprene, first designed and patented by
Metrix ® and Chauvin Arnoux in 1958. These shockproof
sheaths later became widely used on the
handheld instrument market.