Back in the 1980s, the industrial standard for measuring hot liquid melted metals’ temperature was to use handheld platinum thermocouples. These were directly inserted in the liquid metal, wait for few seconds and the device display showed you, in the end, the temperature. They had two big drawbacks though: were pretty expensive and most of the times single usage components. Also being close to very high-temperature objects posed a real-life threat to the people running these measurement operations. How can you get in this case objects’ temperature at a fair safe distance though? Solution relied upon processing their temperature in the infrared (IR) domain. At first glance a simple task to do, but in real life industrial conditions, you have a lot of water vapors, dust, fog, smoke and other media that severely affect your readings in a negative way.

After more than 5 years of research and countless trial and error sensors attempts we had it: a pyrometer sensor embedded into a device capable of remotely measure objects temperature independently of their emissivity or environment’s present heavy conditions like dust, smoke or water vapors. Took another 10 years of tests and industrial validations and in 1997 Nicera, a Japanese sensors manufacturer, helped us bringing this innovative sensor solution into mass market production. Sensor name was: MAR-01 as a tribute to its creator Vasile Martinescu.