If we look at the range of instrumentation available to today’s industry professional, conventional nomenclature short-changes the products. Gas detection comes in many interesting “flavors.”

Early photoionization detector (PID) development is credited to research done in the U.K. in the mid 1960s. An open cell PID for gas chromatography (GC) was invented by Professor Lovelock at Cambridge University. It provided improved sensitivity in an era where the thermal conductivity detector was king and where gas chromatography systems operated under vacuum, allowing the open cell PID to operate. The advent of the flame ionization detector (FID) resulted in the demise of the open cell PID as GC systems began to be operated under pressure rather than vacuum.