Thirty-two Years Connecting with Gas Chromatography

PerkinElmer was in transition from traditional secretarial writing assistance and had recently installed a new-fangled "word processor," which involved a computer the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet, and a trained operator who, in reality, was the effective word processor because all original material and edits still had to go through her. In 1993, the title of the "GC Troubleshooting" column was changed to "GC Connections," to reflect a broadened scope that addressed ongoing developments in the field, including annual coverage of new GC-related products at the Pittsburgh Conference (Pittcon). Metal wall-coated open-tubular capillary columns endure, only now they are made by coating steel tubing with a thin layer of silica, an inversion of the older techniques. A compromise solution is to increase the surface area on the inner column wall by etching or by depositing support material, such as in a porous-layer open-tubular (PLOT) column.