Pioneers of cleanroom technology

Letterpress printing, the light bulb and the steam engine are generally regarded as mankind’s greatest inventions. However, lesser-known discoveries have also revolutionized our lives. For example, in the area of clean work. Without the following brilliant minds, there would probably be neither modern microelectronics nor our current hygiene standards in operating rooms.

• Willis Whitfield (1919-2012): The American physicist is considered the inventor of the modern clean room. His idea of low-turbulence displacement ventilation as a fundamental principle of cleanroom technology is used today in the manufacture of microelectronic components and medicines, among other things.
• In 1953, Wallace Coulter (1913-1998) invented an electronic counter for particles in liquids – the Coulter counter. The American engineer thus made particles quantifiable and classifiable.
• Hugo Howorth (1909-2004): The Englishman developed operating chambers with laminar airflow in the 1960s. The number of postoperative complications has been massively reduced as a result.
• The researchers at the Manhattan Project, who were actually working on the construction of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, developed the HEPA (high efficiency particulate air filter) filter as a kind of by-product. This allows the smallest suspended particles such as viruses, bacteria and spores to be removed from the room air. At least they managed to do something good….

Source: ReinRaumTechnik

Published: March 2024