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Beckman Coulter

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American maker of laboratory instruments and diagnostic systems, formed in 1997 when Beckman Instruments bought Coulter Corporation
Beckman Coulter, Inc.
FormerlyBeckman Instruments, Inc. (until 1998)
TypeSubsidiary of Danaher Corporation
IndustryClinical diagnostics; life-science research instruments
Founded1935 (Beckman Instruments); 1958 (Coulter Electronics)
FoundersArnold O. Beckman; Wallace H. Coulter and Joseph R. Coulter Jr.
HeadquartersBrea, California, United States
ProductsHematology, clinical chemistry and immunoassay analyzers; flow cytometers
RevenueUS$3.3 billion (2009)[1]
Websitebeckmancoulter.com

Beckman Coulter, Inc. is an American manufacturer of laboratory instruments, reagents and diagnostic systems, headquartered in Brea, California.[2] It has been a subsidiary of Danaher Corporation since June 30, 2011.[3] On October 31, 1997, Beckman Instruments, Inc., which Arnold O. Beckman had founded in 1935, bought the privately held Coulter Corporation of Wallace H. Coulter and Joseph R. Coulter Jr.[4] The merged company took the name Beckman Coulter in April 1998.[5] It sells to two markets, clinical diagnostics and life-science research. Its hematology analyzers use the Coulter principle, and its particle analyzers are sold under the name Coulter Counter.[5][6]

Beckman Instruments

The company's own history begins in the early 1930s with Arnold Beckman, who needed to measure the pH of lemon juice. The colorimetric methods of the day failed because the preservative used on lemons interfered with them. Beckman proposed a vacuum-tube amplifier that let a non-scientist read pH from a meter, and by 1935 he had sold the first commercial pH meter. The company grew from a small operation in the rear of a garage in Pasadena, California. Its history names two later products besides the pH meter, the DU spectrophotometer and the helipot potentiometer.[7]

Beckman Instruments became a public company in 1952 and in 1968 added clinical diagnostics to its laboratory instruments. SmithKline Corporation acquired it in 1982 to form SmithKline Beckman Corporation, which operated it as a subsidiary until 1989, when it was divested. It has been independent since.[5]

Coulter Corporation

Coulter Electronics, Inc., was incorporated on April 14, 1958, to market the counter that Wallace Coulter had built on his principle. It was then in Chicago, and it moved to Hialeah, Florida, in December 1961.[8][9] Its Model S hematology analyzer of late 1968 printed seven blood parameters from one sample in under a minute.[10] The brothers merged the company into Coulter Corporation in 1991. Joseph died on November 27, 1995, and Wallace's declining health led to the sale of the company. Coulter Corporation remained under the control of the Coulter family until then, and it had some 5,500 employees.[5][10]

The 1997 acquisition

Beckman signed a stock purchase agreement for Coulter Corporation on August 29, 1997. The sellers were the Wallace H. Coulter Charitable Remainder Unitrust, the Joseph R. Coulter, Jr. Trust and the Coulter Family Limited Partnership.[4] Beckman completed the purchase on October 31. The price was $875 million in cash, subject to adjustment after closing, plus the assumption of about $180 million of indebtedness, net of cash, and about $100 million of other Coulter obligations. To pay for it Beckman entered a new $1.3 billion unsecured credit facility and borrowed about $600 million under its revolving portion and about $500 million under the term loan.[4]

Beckman had bought the Access immunoassay line from Sanofi Diagnostics the year before, and Coulter added hematology, flow cytometry and hemostasis product lines.[7] At the end of 1997 the combined company had about 7,900 employees in the United States and about 3,200 abroad.[11] Its legal name that year was still Beckman Instruments, Inc., and its annual report gives the principal executive offices as 2500 Harbor Boulevard, Fullerton, California.[11] Beckman Coulter adopted its present name in April 1998.[5]

Wallace Coulter died the next summer. He had arranged for $100 million of his share of the proceeds to be distributed to Coulter employees, and the rest of his share funded the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation.[10]

Operations

The annual report for 2000 describes two main customer groups. Clinical diagnostics customers were hospital laboratories, physicians' offices and group practices, and reference laboratories to which they send tests. Life-science customers were universities, medical research laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms. The report says the company held top market positions in hematology, hemostasis and routine chemistry testing.[5] At the end of 2000 it had about 6,945 employees in the United States and about 2,575 abroad, some 1,600 fewer than three years earlier.[5][11] Its offices were still in Fullerton.[5] The company's website now lists the Diagnostics Division headquarters in Brea and a separate campus in Miami, Florida, where Coulter had moved its business in 1961.[2][7]

The name Coulter Counter was registered as US trademark 679,591 on June 2, 1959.[12] The life-science side of the company still sells the Multisizer 4e Coulter Counter, which uses the Coulter principle to size particles from 0.2 to 1,600 µm with apertures from 10 to 2,000 µm in diameter.[6]

Danaher

Beckman Coulter bought the Olympus Diagnostics Systems business in 2009, which added high-throughput clinical chemistry systems to its range.[7] On February 7, 2011, Danaher and Beckman Coulter announced a merger agreement under which Danaher would pay $83.50 per share in cash, about 45 percent above the closing price of December 9, 2010, before rumors of an acquisition reached the market. The press release valued the transaction at about $6.8 billion, including debt assumed and net of cash acquired, and said that Beckman Coulter's board had voted unanimously to accept the proposal. It described more than 200,000 Beckman Coulter systems in laboratories around the world and put recurring revenue, from reagents, service and leases, at about 80 percent of the 2009 revenue of $3.3 billion.[1] Danaher completed the acquisition on June 30, 2011.[3]

In Molecular Reality's materials

Molecular Reality Corporation cites the Coulters as the origin of its own technique. A post on its members' site, signed with the persona name Thucydides and dated March 29, 2026, is titled "Bend it like Beckman Coulter". It says that Coulter Counters "are pore-based devices, but in the era of commercialized nanopore sequencing, it's easy to forget that the only serious difference is size. The principle is the same."[13] The post opens with the line "They should have won a Nobel prize." The company's public guide says: "Coulter counted cells, the biophysicists threaded DNA, and we are trying to give the whole family mechanical control."[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Danaher to Acquire Beckman Coulter, Inc. for $83.50 per Share or $6.8 Billion" (Press release). Danaher Corporation and Beckman Coulter, Inc. February 7, 2011. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  2. ^ a b "About Beckman Coulter, Our Locations". Beckman Coulter. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  3. ^ a b "Danaher Completes Acquisition of Beckman Coulter" (Press release). Danaher Corporation. June 30, 2011. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  4. ^ a b c "Form 8-K, Beckman Instruments, Inc., report of October 31, 1997". SEC EDGAR. 1997. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h "Form 10-K for the fiscal year 2000, Beckman Coulter, Inc., "Company History"". SEC EDGAR. 2001. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  6. ^ a b "Multisizer 4e Coulter Counter". Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  7. ^ a b c d "Our history". Beckman Coulter. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  8. ^ M. D. Graham (November 18, 2020). "The Coulter Principle: For the Good of Humankind, chapter 6, "Commercialization"". University of Kentucky. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  9. ^ M. D. Graham (November 18, 2020). "The Coulter Principle: For the Good of Humankind, chapter 7, "Transition"". University of Kentucky. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  10. ^ a b c M. D. Graham (November 18, 2020). "The Coulter Principle: For the Good of Humankind, chapter 8, "Elaboration"". University of Kentucky. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  11. ^ a b c "Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1997, Beckman Instruments, Inc." SEC EDGAR. 1998. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  12. ^ "COULTER COUNTER, US trademark registration 0679591". Justia Trademarks. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  13. ^ Thucydides (March 29, 2026). "Bend it like Beckman Coulter". EQBio-OS.
  14. ^ "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
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