On ignition the temperature of the space shuttle's preburner rocket motor rises nineteen hundred degrees in just over half a second.  A Rosemount sensor monitors the process and provides primary data for an abort decision--which must be made within six seconds.

The cruciality of the instrument is extreme, of course, but Rosemount rode to the moon with Neil Armstrong (or vice versa) and there are three hundred of its sensors in the shuttle system.  And the aborter is a logical extension of the device for which the firm was founded in 1956.

The air force was testing jets at the frontier, and charting the territory meant monitoring each advance before pushing further--measuring the process.  How does air compression at high speed heat the nose of a plane?  How do we find out?

A University of Minnesota scientist designed an instrument no one could manufacture, so he incorporated and made it.  Now Rosemount sensors monitor and control temperature, pressure, flow, level, density; measure pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, chlorine . . .

Science is observation, and Rosemount is all eyes and ears.  Processes once analyzed are exploited and must be continually monitored, so most sensors now go to industry.  A pressure transmitter set a worldwide standard:  mean time between failures calculated at over forty years.

A far cry from thermometers ("a state-of-the-art digital control system that integrates analog, multiplexed, and discreet channel signals"), the instruments are varied and Rosemount's business is by nature international.  The sun never sets on its sensors.