Curtis Instruments
Curtis Instruments was founded in 1960 with fewer than 10 people working in a rented storefront in Mt. Kisco, 40 miles north of New York. In 1963, Curtis pioneered gages to monitor the state-of-charge, the "fuel" level, of vehicle traction batteries. Astronauts exploring the moon in Lunar Roving Vehicles in 1971-1972 relied on early Curtis gages. The moon thus was a proving ground for forerunners of Curtis gages that now enhance electric vehicles in warehouses, factories and mines, on golf courses, mobility aids for the handicapped and on-street vehicles. Since 1975, when it introduced the first solid-state battery "fuel" gage with circuitry to prevent deep discharge, Curtis has been the No. 1 world source of instrumentation for electric vehicles. Today, Curtis, still headquartered in Mt. Kisco, has over 1,000 employees. It has four major engineering groups in New York, California, Switzerland and China staffed by 125 top engineers whose product development teams that set the standards for vehicle performance in the industry.