Ray Peacock,or more correctly, G. Raymond Peacock (he prefers Ray) is an Industrial Physicist. He was, until the founding of Temperatures.com, Inc. in August 2001, the staff temperature sensor specialist for LTV Steel Company at their technology Center in Independence, Ohio, USA.

He has years of experience in IR temperature sensors, their applications, especially in industry, and. In addition his technical background includes other optical measuring devices, heat transfer, thermal modeling, measurement device control and QA methodology.

Along the way he claims he earned an OJT-equivalent of an MBA through having a very successful instrument marketing and small company management sub-career over a 16 year stay at Land Instruments, Inc. He started as the third employee at Land and helped build the organization and markets in the USA for the UK-based parent company, Land Instruments International (formerly Land Pyrometers, Ltd). He served in succesive positions as Marketing Manager, Engineering & Production Manager, General Manager and Vice President-Engineering. He had full P&L responsibility for a six year period while the company broke new ground and he, and his "merry" men and women, established a manufacturing line in the USA. That product line led to the subsequent spin-off of a second Land company in the USA, Land Combustion.

Between careers at Land and LTV, Ray consulted for a wide variety of market and technical customers and was on his way to a third successful small company when LTV Steel gave him the opportunity to return to research, one of his first and favorite pastimes.

A little more information on some of his experiences and accomplishments are below:

In his varied technical past, he has been involved in in infrared and contact temperature sensors and thermal modeling for such diverse measurements as biological tissues exposed to laser radiation and induction-heated, butt-welded piping. He was co-inventor of a novel welding process while still a graduate student.

In one research activity at the US Army Medical Research Laboratories Biophysics Branch, he authored or co-authored more than a dozen technical papers and articles on the Biological effects of laser radiation from the LW IR to the UV in a period of only two years.

Among his technical achievements were development of methods to measure reflection, transmission and absorption coefficients of optical beam splitters, infrared absorption coefficients of biological tissues, optical power density inside of an eye, and power/energy diagnostics of laser beams from CW to Q-switched.

He also helped develop new ways to measure and apply temperature sensors in biological materials, glass melting, forming and tempering, aluminum, brass and steel processing, temperature compensation of thermocouple circuits, gas temperatures, acid and water dew point temperatures and more.

His work on the non-contact temperature measurement of hot products in hotter environments culminated in several technical papers as well as a new product line for Land Instruments, Inc..

The widely-used Land Continuous Caster Thermometer system resulted from his breakthrough marketing development efforts and persistance to make it a higher priority in the development-investment cycle.

The Minolta-Land world-wide resale agreement was begun after his objection to the then Technical Director's initial opinion that the units would not sell in the UK and they also would interfere with an existing product development, well underway. At that time Ray had P&L control of the USA operation and promised that he could and would seek the line seperately for North America if, for no other reason but, to keep it out of the hands of their main competitors. The Minolta-Land marketing partnership is now more than 20 years old and very successful for all.

The Land Acid Dewpoint Meter was discoved in his marketing work, redesigned and placed into production under his leadership. That effort led to opening new markets for the Continuous Acid Dewpointmeter in power plant operations. The pioneering work to establish new uses in Sulfuric Acid manufacturing plants came about based on his and his team's, activites.

At LTV Steel he was awarded the distinguished Technology Center General Manger's Award several times. His first major accomplishment was the sucessful development and implementation of a non-contact temperature sensor for continuous measurement of Galvanealled steel strip. His technique was adopted at the two manufactring lines of LTV Steel and ran as control sensors for years, until the plants were shut down during the 2001 LTV bankruptsy. He also led the further development of a line-scanning thermometer system for the same positions to monitor the cross-strip temperature gradients that can occur in the Galvanealling process. This, too, was adopted in both LTV lines. Neither accomplishment was recognised outside of LTV Steel until he presented a paper on it at The Eighth International Temperature Symposium. That paper will be published in late 2003 in the Proceedings of the Symposium under the familiar title, "Temperature : Its Measurement and Control in Science and Industry, Vol. 7".

He also developed a technique and equipment for performing on-line traceable verification of IR spot thermometer and line-scanning thermometer calibrations on moving steel strip and slabs in the 1200°F to 2300°F temperature region. This led to completion of a unique project to unify the temperature measurement capabilities of three different hot strip rolling mills. It further led to improved methods to identify process temperatures for toll-rolling of strip from another company's hot slabs. Even further, it helped verify and solve the problems of yet another steel company's erroneous emissivity settings on their mill.

Another development was the implementation of an IR thermometer QA system at a new Continuous Anneal Line. The line was basically controlled by the temperature readings from 16 high-quality Infrared Thermometers. First, the thermometer specifications were improved from the vendor's initial offerings to obtain the best quality sensor systems with independently calibrated sensors and signal processors. Then a calibration verification system and practices were established, documented and monitored. It ran successfully for a 10 year period. In that time there were very few instrument failures and no control problems related to incorrect temperature readings. Because of the line's geometry, Ray showed that it was possible to manipulate two or three of the IR Thermometer readings by the plant computers to calculate the surface cleanliness of one side of the steel strip at the pre-heat section exit.

As a professional, his activities and memberships include:

AISE, the Association of Iron & Steel Engineers Where he has authored technical papers and given oral presentations on non-contact temperature measurement since the 1980's.

ASTM, American Society for Testing and Materials, Where he is the Chair of Subcommittee E20.02 on Radiation Thermometry;

ISA, where he is a Senior Member, a member of The Process Measurement & Control Division, the Metals & Mining Industries Division, is the past, founding Director of the Glass and Ceramics Industry Division and developer and instructor for two courses on temperature measurement;

SPIE, The International Optical Engineering Society, where has authored several papers and been a session co- chair since 2000 when won the Best Paper of 2000 Award for his paper on Thermal Imaging of Slag in a Pouring Stream of Steel at Thermosense XXII. He is a Conference Co-Chair for ThermoSense XXVI (April 2004).

NCSLI, The National Conference of Standards Laboratories International as a correspondent, where he keeps up with standards practices.

ISPoT, International Society of Professional Thermographers. He is a founding Director and member of the Society and its acting webmaster.

His time is split today between finding new information and using it to update the web site, consulting for various clients and running the day-to-day business activities of Temperatures.com, Inc. He has help from his wife and three sons.

His interest in an educational web site was encouraged and often supported by two of his sons, Matt, who has his own cutting edge web graphics company (where he seems to be always "cutting up"), and Mike who is webmaster for a Fortune 100 Company. In his spare time Ray reads Wired and Red Herring, works on investment research for the TCIC NAIC Investment Club in Northern Ohio and is tries to learn ASP, PHP and JSP in an effort to make his web sites more economical to manage. Yes, there are tons of email to answer from the sites, mostly from students seeking resources to complete projects "Someday," he promises, "I'll think about publishing a book with all the interesting and sometimes humorous email that comes from literally all over the world."

Thanks for visiting.