History of ISA – The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society

The Founders’ Mission:

The object of the Society shall be to advance the arts and sciences connected with the theory, design, manufacture, and use of instruments in the various sciences and technologies.

Today’s Mission:

The mission of ISA as the global society for instrumentation, systems, and automation is to:

Maximize the effectiveness of ISA members and other practitioners and organizations worldwide to advance and apply the science, technology, and allied arts of instrumentation, systems, and automation in all industries and applications.

Identify and promote emerging technologies and applications.

Develop and deliver a wide variety of high-value information products and services to the global community.

ISA officially was born as the Instrument Society of America on 28 April 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The Society grew out of the desire of 18 local instrument societies to form a national organization. It was the brainchild of Richard Rimbach of the Instruments Publishing Company. Rimbach is recognized as the founder of ISA.

Industrial instruments, which became widely used during World War II, continued to play an ever-greater role in the expansion of technology after the war. Individuals like Rimbach and others involved in industry saw a need for the sharing of information about instruments on a national basis, as well as for standards and uniformity. The Instrument Society of America addressed that need.

Albert F. Sperry, chairman of Panelit Corporation, became ISA’s first president in 1946. In that same year, the Society held its first conference and exhibit in Pittsburgh. The first standard, RP 5.1 Instrument Flow Plan Symbols, followed in 1949, and the first journal, which eventually became today’s InTech, was published in 1954.

In the years following, ISA continued to expand its products and services, increasing the size and scope of the ISA conference and exhibition, developing symposia, offering professional development and training, adding to technical Divisions, and even producing films about measurement and control.

Membership grew from 900 in 1946 to 6,900 in 1953, and today ISA Members number 28,000 from almost 100 countries.

Recognizing ISA’s international reach and the fact that its technical scope had grown beyond instruments, in the fall of 2000, the ISA Council of Society Delegates approved a legal name change to ISA--The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society. Today, ISA's corporate branding strategy focuses exclusively on the highly recognizable letters, though ISA's official, legal name remains the same.