Development
The machines were originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories in 1997. Prototypes have been under improvement since 2001 at the Science and Technology division of the Homeland Security Department of the United States. Sandia National Laboratories currently licenses its "puffer" preconcentration collection technology in collaboration with Syagen Technology in the production of the industry's only mass spectrometer-based puffer machine. According to an article in the 3 September, 2006, New York Times, they are also manufactured by General Electric and Smiths Detection (based in London) using Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) technology at a cost of about $160,000 each. Delays in testing at the Homeland Security Department laboratory and questions about reliability have hindered their deployment. Early models were loud and slow, and required a lot of power. Durability has also been a concern. Trace portal machines are currently the only airport screening devices that automatically examine passengers for explosives.
Read more about this topic: Explosives Trace-detection Portal Machine
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)