Incorporated in 1990 as Analytical Spectral Devices, Inc., ASD is a privately held company based in Boulder, Colorado. The company was established to address a fundamental need of earth science researchers for a robust, high-performance, portable instrument that could be used in field work. Responding to this need, two renowned remote sensing scientists, Dr. Alexander F. H. Goetz, Director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space (CSES), and Dr. Brian Curtiss, a senior scientist at CSES, designed and produced the Personal Spectrometer II (PSII), the world’s first truly portable, rugged, research-grade spectroradiometer.

The PSII was quickly embraced by fellow scientists around the world as a practical and necessary tool to do their work. Subsequent generations of portable field instruments, trademarked under the name FieldSpec^® , earned ASD world-wide recognition as the number one portable instrumentation supplier for remote sensing scientists and field researchers. Today, the FieldSpec 3 and FieldSpec HandHeld instrument families provide researchers with a complete suite of instruments for all of their field work needs.
  ASD successfully expanded beyond its origins in the scientific markets, into industrial manufacturing markets, by providing instrumentation solutions for the real-time measurement of non-homogenous materials in manufacturing and quality control environments. ASD’s industrial instrument lines now include QualitySpec^® for on-line and near-line process control, LabSpec^® for material inspection and identification in the field and lab, RxSpec^® for pharmaceutical validation, TerraSpec^® for mining exploration, and AgriSpec^® for vegetation and soil analysis.
  ASD’s legacy is one of innovation and leadership in addressing customers’ needs—providing the latest technologies combined with the highest standards of quality and service. We continue to provide customers with value enhancing solutions to their materials measurement needs by offering the following resources:    

• Instrumentation for field, near-line, and on-line materials measurements 
• Applications expertise supplied by our SummitCAL Solutions Team, our scientists, and engineers
• Service and support for installations, and post-sales support worldwide
• Global presence: ASD has instruments in over 60 countries and a distribution network encompassing six continents 

 
Evidence of our success can be seen in the timeline of major milestones in ASD’s history.