Where does the term Elrepho come from?

Elrepho with liquid cooling unit

The Zeiss Elrepho was introduced in the 1950's by the Carl Zeiss Company of Oberkochen, West Germany.  It was a diffuse (sphere) geometry brightness instrument developed for the Paper Industry. The instrument had a needle read out and the lamp was so hot, it required a liquid cooling unit.  The term Elrepho was a shortened version of Electro-recording photometer.

The Elrepho with its integrating sphere (diffuse) geometry was adopted by the European and Canadian Paper Industries and ISO created ISO 2469 as the standard for measuring brightness. The Elrepho remained the only instrument manufactured in accordance with European, Canadian and ISO standards until Technidyne Corporation introduced the Technibrite™ TB-1 in 1980.

Since that time Technidyne has developed and manufactured several generations of diffuse instrumentation according to ISO 2469 (Technibrite™ TB-1 [2-piece], Technibrite™ Micro TB-1C, Technibrite™ TB-1 [1-piece] & Color Touch™ family). The Color Touch™ was initially released in 1994. This instrument changed the capabilities of diffuse instruments with unique features such as automatic calibration (no manual data entry), an internal swing-in standard and an integrated computer with touch screen interface. These are all still uniquely Technidyne Color Touch™ features.

1950's - Zeiss Elrepho
1980 - Technibrite™ TB-1 [2-piece]
1984 - Technibrite™ Micro TB-1C
1990 - Technibrite™ TB-1 [1-piece]
1994 - Color Touch™
1998 - Color Touch™ 2
2001 - Color Touch™ PC
2002 - PROFILE/Plus™ Color Touch™
2015 - Color Touch™ X