/stands up
Hi folks. Most of you know me as kookbreaker. Some of you know me from owning a certain science store that I am not allowed to mention in my .sig.
In any case, allow me to explain some background.
Edmund Scientific, which most folks know, was sold to Science Kit & Boreal Lab in 2001 so that the Edmund Company could continue to operate as Edmund Optics, they now produce a huge catalog of industrial optics and equipment.
The division that was sold was semi-officially known as 'Scientifics'. They had been using that title on the catalogs for several years before the sale. It was officially 'Scientifics, a division of Edmund Scientific'. It was the Edmund most of us are familiar with.
Science Kit was eventually purchased by VWR - a large supplier of lab equipment. While Scientifics thrived under SK and VWR at first, they have since been struggling a bit. I suspect their catalog management has been an issue. After I had a nice write-up in The Philadelphia Inquirer I was actually contacted by representatives of VWR - I am presently not at liberty to say why. Robert Edmund also contacted me.
As some have noted, this is not Edmund Scientifics first flirting with woo. In the last decade a few items popped up that were very questionable. But in the past the Edmund Catalog was often quite heavy with woo. Evidence this scan I have of a page from the 1975 catalog:
Edmund dropped most of this stuff in the 80's when they started to branch out into industrial concerns and were worried about being taken seriously.
I was hired by the Scientifics division in 1999 to be most of their product line manager. I was rather determined to not add anything close to woo stuff, and despite this there were tons of products that came in of one kind of ************ or another. Once the company was sold, I no longer had any say in the product line.
