Barton History

1925;

A company called Barton Instruments is started by Barton Jones and partners to develop forced air transformer coolers. 

 1943;

Barton Jones invents the liquid-filled, dual-bellows unit. This "dry-type," rupture-proof element was a completely new concept in flow, liquid-level, and differential pressure measurement, and led to the heart of Barton’s product offering: the Differential Pressure Unit (DPU). The dual-bellows meter continues as the industry standard for mechanical differential pressure measurement. 

 1949;

Barton Instruments Corporation is founded. By now, the company has diversified into the manufacturing of a much wider range of products. One product group however, has remained a constant through the years: the differential pressure instrument line. 

 1955;

Barton Sales Company is created as an independent representative organization. Barton Sales, also located in City of Industry, is today a wholly owned subsidiary. 

 1963;

Barton purchases the Flow Equipment Company, manufacturer of the Floco product line of positive displacement meters used extensively in the oil industry. 

 1964;

Barton purchases two of its sales representatives, Snyder Company (Houston, Texas) and Oilfield Services, Inc. (Calgary, Alberta). Snyder became ITT Snyder, a wholly-owned sales subsidiary with regional offices throughout Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. Oilfield Services is now known as ITT Barton Instruments Limited. 

 1964;

Barton Instruments Corporation is purchased by International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (ITT®) and becomes known as "ITT Barton" brand name by combining the ITT trademark with the Barton trademark until 1998.

 1977;

ITT Barton’s business continues to grow along with the expanding energy market, so the company finds it necessary to move to its current quarter-million square foot facility in City of Industry. 

 1979;

Barton United Kingdom becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary, responsible for marketing Barton products in Europe and the Middle East. 

1980;

 ITT Barton Instruments Division came into being on January 1, 1980, with ITT Barton Instrument company becoming a unit of the Division's manufacturing arm. 

 1985;

ITT Barton acquires an additional wholly-owned subsidiary, Stallings and Company, Inc., based in Glenwood, Illinois. This provides ITT Barton with additional sales channels into industrial markets, such as: chemical processing, power generation, nuclear power, pulp and paper. 

1995;

 In December 1995, ITT Corporation split into three independent corporations. One of the newly formed corporations was ITT Industries, Inc., and ITT Barton became a member of the Controls and Instruments Division, under the ITT Fluid Technology Corporation. 

1998;

ITT Barton is acquired by American Commercial Holdings of Lexington, Kentucky, USA, and becomes Barton Instrument Systems, LLC, an independent company. The purchase agreement forbids Barton Instrument Systems from using the ITT mark on future products or literature going forward. As a result, the ittbarton.com website was abandoned and returned to the public domain. The products were then referred to by the Barton brand name only.

2000;

Differential Pressure Instruments Inc. acquired the abandoned ittbarton.com domain and begins providing a reliable alternate source for new surplus ITT Barton products worldwide. 

2003;

Barton Instrument System LLC “BIS”sold the Barton trade name and its oil and gas product line to a company, in Texas, named Nuflo. The NUFLO Brand was created in 2003. NuFlo Measurement Systems was established due to the acquisition of three companies, Halliburton Measurement Systems, Barton Instrument Systems and PMC Global Industries. Because BIS sold the Barton trade name, BIS changed their name to Prime Measurement Systems LLC “Prime”. The portion of the product line purchased by Nuflo, from BIS, continued to be manufactured by Prime under contract to Nuflo The Differential Pressure Units (DPUs) used in BARTON chart recorders, pneumatic controllers, switches and indicators would be manufactured by Prime until Nuflo could take over manufacturing in the PWC Global facility. Prime retained the ownership of the Government, commercial and Nuclear product models and re-branded them under the Prime brand. However, Prime was struggling and could not perform the commitment. Delivery times were extremely long and the industry was concerned the former Barton product line would become obsolete. It was this controversy that spurred the development for a drop-in replacement of the Barton differential pressure line. So, the owners of ABBITZ Measurement began reverse engineering the most popular Barton and Prime models.

2005;

Cooper Cameron acquired NuFlo Technologies, Inc.

2006;

Cooper Cameron was officially renamed Cameron International Corporation "Cameron” www.c-a-m.com.

2007;

Nuflo becomes the Cameron Measurement Systems Division. Prime Measurement Systems LLC filed for Bankruptcy. Assets were liquidated and sold at auction. The remaining product line and Intellectual property of Prime Measurement was purchased via an arranged 363 bankruptcy sale by Cameron®.  "A key element of this aquisition is the re-branding of PRIME products to their tratditional and historical BARTON brand."

The deal was designed to strengthen its technical capability and secure deliveries on key components.

DP products formally produced by ITT Barton are manufactured by Cameron under the Barton trademark with some exceptions for the discontinued models. Cameron Measurement started working on its nuclear qualifications to produce the EQ qualified product line for the nuclear industry. The Nuclear Industry was working diligently through JUTG (Joint Utility Task Group) and EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) www.epri.com to solve the nuclear qualified Barton availability issues. Some companies came forward, saying they can solve the problem by manufacturing reverse engineered products from the Barton differential pressure instrument models. Two of the companies were third party qualifiers, actively participating in the nuclear dedication of commercial grade product for use in the nuclear industry. One of those companies has withdrawn their efforts to manufacture a replacement for the EQ Barton line on rumor that Cameron had completed their qualifications. It is unknown if the other third party qualifier continued progressing in an effort to solve the issue, but no competing product was ever presented. A third company, ABBITZ Measurement LLC  continued with the developments and is currently manufacturing reverse engineered, drop in replacements, for the most popular commercial grade Barton instruments. Any commercial grade product manufactured by ABBITZ would have to go through a dedication process to be used in any nuclear safety related application. Availability of Barton products had been an industry concern for some time. Differential Pressure Instruments Inc. www.ittbarton.com has been actively selling new surplus ITT Barton instruments since 2000. DPI also has the ability to repair existing Barton products. Surplus products are part of just about every industry. And are usually good alternative sources for hard to obtain product. There are few companies on the web that repair Barton instruments. The industrial facilities which use Barton instruments should consider using these repair companies to save money and time. Often an outage can be resolved quicker by getting the affected instrument repaired, rather than replaced. Though this particular product is not the only game in town for the measurement of differential pressure, it is one of the most respected and deeply rooted within the global market. And has a very good reputation for quality and durability. Competition is healthy for the economy and provides options to the industry. This product line needs a competitive alternate to resolve the availability and potential obsolescence fears the industry has been expressing. It appears companies are seeing the need, and responding to it by producing comparable products. So don’t write this product off just because of its turbulent past. Cameron has since completed nuclear approvals. ABBITZ Measurement is manufacturing quality reverse engineered drop in replacements with the same form, fit and function of various Barton models and providing attractive prices and delivery schedules.

2016;

The oilfield services company Schlumberger® completed the acquisition of Cameron International for $14.8 billion, in a combination of stock and cash. The Barton operations are buried deep within this mega corporation. I look forward to reporting the future saga of the legacy of Barton.

2019;

Rockwell Automation and Schlumberger announce closing of Sensia joint venture.

Sensia LLC reported they will manufacture recorders and Cameron will manufacture other Barton differential pressure instruments.