Beckman Coulter Inc. is a Danaher Corporation company that develops, manufactures, and markets products that simplify, automate and innovate complex biomedical testing. It operates in two industries: Diagnostics and Life Sciences. For more than 80 years, Beckman Coulter Inc. has helped healthcare and laboratory professionals, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities, medical schools, and research institutions worldwide. The company eventually grew to employ over 12,000 people, with $5.8 billion in annual sales by 2017. It is currently headquartered in Brea, California. Beckman Coulter was acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2011. History Founded by Caltech professor Arnold O. Beckman in 1935 as National Technical Laboratories to commercialize a pH meter that he had invented. In the 1940s, Beckman changed the name to Arnold O. Beckman, Inc. to sell oxygen analyzers, the Helipot precision potentiometer, and spectrophotometers. In the 1950s, the company name changed to Beckman Instruments, Inc. In 1954, Beckman Instruments acquired ultracentrifuge maker Spinco (Specialized Instruments Corp.). The Spinco division went on to design and manufacture a broad range of laboratory centrifuges. In 1955, Beckman established the seminal Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory as a division of Beckman Instruments to begin commercializing the semiconductor transistor technology invented by Caltech alumnus William Shockley. Because Shockley's aging mother lived in Palo Alto, California, the Shockley Laboratory was established in nearby Mountain View, California, and thus, "Silicon Valley" was born. In 1961, Beckman acquired Offner Electronics, a company founded by inventor Franklin F. Offner. In 1982, the company merged into SmithKline to form SmithKline Beckman, with Arnold Beckman as vice chairman, but regained its independence in 1989 after SmithKline merged with Beecham Group to form SmithKline Beecham (now part of GlaxoSmithKline). In 1995, the company acquired Hybritech, Inc. from Eli Lilly. In 1996, the company acquired the Sanofi portion of Sanofi Pasteur Diagnostics. In 1998, the company acquired Coulter Corporation, a company founded by Wallace H. Coulter, the inventor of the Coulter counter. Beckman, thereafter, changed its name to Beckman Coulter. By 2003, the company has more than 200,000 systems operating in laboratories around the world. In 2005, the company acquired Diagnostic Systems Laboratories (DSL) based in Webster, Texas. In 2006, the company acquired Lumigen and Agencourt Bioscience. In 2007, the company acquired the Flow Cytometry Business Group of Dako North America, Inc. In 2009, the company acquired Lab-based Diagnostics business of Olympus Corporation Japan. That same year, the company moved its world headquarters from Fullerton,