massachusetts 1946 headquarters norwood massachusetts products materials testing hardware number of employees 2 000 website www.instron.com an instron device at the georgia tech research institute in 1958 . instron an itw company is a manufacturer of test equipment designed to evaluate the mechanical properties of materials and components such as universal testing machines . in 1946 harold hindman and george burr who worked together at massachusetts institute of technology mit teamed up to determine the properties of new materials to be used in parachutes . together they designed a material testing machine based on strain gauge load cells and servo control systems . this led to the formation of instron engineering corporation . 1 ceast now operating within instron was founded in 1953 by dr. mario grosso and focussed initially on refurbishing instruments shipped from america through the marshall plan 1 . later the company used its experience to develop polymer testing instruments . today the company is based in pianezza turin and specializes in impact rheology and hdt vicat testing of polymers typically thermoplastics . in 2008 ceast was acquired by instron but continues to operate semi autonomously . contents 1 application areas 2 acquisitions 3 recognition and awards 4 references 5 external links application areas edit tensile strength testing 2 compressive strength testing fatigue testing 3 flexural strength testing impact drop weight and pendulum testing 4 5 heat deflection temperature testing 6 vicat softening point testing 7 melt flow index testing 8 rheological testing 9 acquisitions edit severn furnace limited wilson hardness reicherter wolpert wilson 10 shore durometer instruments 11 ist structural testing 12 dynatup impact force 13 satec 14 ceast 15 recognition and awards edit in 2015 customers recognized instron as the best mechanical testers 2 references edit george burr 86 . boston globe . 2003 11 20 . retrieved 2008 03 05 . https www.vendop.com best vendor 2015 mechanical testers external links edit http www.instron.com official site v t e illinois tool works subsidiaries click commerce crane carrier corporation hobart corporation instron itw miller itw mima packaging systems this technology article about a corporation or company is a stub . you can help wikipedia by expanding it . v t e retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title instron & oldid 724502816 categories instrument making corporationstechnological company stubshidden categories all stub articles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages edit links this page was last modified on 9 june 2016 at 17 37 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view