Private industry, the U.S. military and the National Weather Service have been frequent customers. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has purchased many scientific devices from Kahlsico. However, about 70 percent of the company's current clients, including many research and government organizations, are overseas. Gerald Kahl, vice president at Kahlsico, said he will give small-group tours of the El Cajon manufacturing facility upon request. From Antarctica to Algeria, Antwerp to Anaheim, people rely on thermometers, indoors and out, in fair weather and foul.
Thermometers relay important, even life-saving information.
Doctors and nurses, chefs and grocers, the military and chemists use them. So do oceanographers, meteorologists, researchers, chemists and worried moms and dads. And every time we walk into a climate-controlled building, the very air we're feeling and breathing is altered because of the reading on a thermometer. At Kahl Scientific, the thermometer is treated with reverence. The company, called Kahlsico for short and housed in a small, weathered, nondescript plant, has been making the instruments here since 1948.