In the beginning there were a few engineers and a lot of ideas.
The legacy of our global company reaches back to 1948 and a three-man partnership that was forged at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA. This village, between Dayton and Columbus, still serves as the headquarters for what started as the "Yellow Springs Instrument Company" — now known as YSI Inc.
We invite you to browse our brief history and explore our timeline.
By 1960, YSI had grown to several dozen employees and numerous instruments that had gained wide acceptance among scientists and researchers. The history of YSI would be incomplete without mention of Dr. Leland Clark, to whom not only YSI, but the world, owes a debt of gratitude. Dr. Clark was a researcher at Fels Research Institute with whom YSI’s founders worked closely. Dr. Clark is best known for having developed the aptly-named Clark oxygen electrode that allows dissolved oxygen to be measured in liquids. Applications for the Clark oxygen electrode not only include environmental ones, but also biomedical and industrial applications. For example, Dr. Clark’s invention enabled physicians to perform open-heart surgery because, for the first time, immediate blood oxygen measurements could be taken in real-time in the operating room rather than having a sample drawn which then had to be taken to a lab for analysis. Dr. Clark also developed the technology behind the glucose biosensor, used daily by millions of people with diabetes and other conditions.
As the 1990s approached, the company adhered to a well-defined plan of providing quality products to specific global niche markets (environmental monitoring and testing, precision temperature measurement, and biotechnology). In 1988, YSI purchased ENDECO, an oceanographic data collection and monitoring company based in Marion, Massachusetts with over 25 years of experience, in order to expand their presence in the environmental field and to take advantage of ENDECO’s well-developed expertise in the design of computer based products and instruments for the marine and coastal markets. In the 1990s, YSI introduced what became our most significant product line to date: the 6-Series environmental monitoring sondes. These instruments brought together YSI’s proven dissolved oxygen sensor with additional sensors into a family of products specific to monitoring water quality. The 6-Series product line was quickly adopted by many Federal, State and Local monitoring agencies, as well as University researchers and Environmental Consultants because of the products’ ease-of-use, long-term and continuous deployment capabilities, and the reliable, high quality data they collect.
Today, YSI is a complete system integrator with many examples of successful projects both in the United States and Internationally. YSI’s Integrated Systems division (formally ENDECO) designs and manufactures products and systems that integrate YSI’s proven and reliable 6-Series instrumentation to provide real-time data acquisition from a variety of sampling platforms including, buoys, autonomous water column profilers, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and ship-board monitoring systems.