Vendor lineage
Fluke - the meters and certifiers in every field bag
The 87 multimeter and the DSX CableAnalyzer - and a 2015 three-way split (Fortive, NetScout, NetAlly) worth knowing cold.
John Fluke Sr.'s 1948 instruments company became the generic word for the multimeter itself, and Fluke Networks made cabling certification an instrument category with legal weight. The 2015 Danaher deal split the story: enterprise visibility went to NetScout (the handheld line later reborn as NetAlly), while cable certification stayed Fluke Networks under Fortive - one company, three present-day homes.
John Fluke and David Packard were friends and roommates while both worked at General Electric. One of them co-founded Hewlett-Packard; the other started an instruments company in a Connecticut basement in 1948, and the two firms then competed in test and measurement for decades, with Fluke leading in calibration.
The early product was a meter that read voltage, current and power at once, and the one that changed the trade was the 8020A of 1977: a digital multimeter you could hold, with a liquid crystal display and a purpose-built converter chip inside it. Instrumentation left the bench and went into a bag, which is the whole reason a meter with this name is in the hands of people who have never heard of the company that made it.
The networking half does something the family article on test and measurement describes exactly: it produces a number somebody else would rather not hear. A cable certifier issues a verdict against a published standard - Category 6A, Class EA, ANSI/TIA-1152-A - and that verdict decides whether an installation is accepted and an installer is paid. The instrument is not measuring for curiosity. It is settling a commercial question, and both parties agreed in advance to be bound by it.
This is why the conditions matter more than the reading, and why certification equipment is calibrated, dated and traceable in a way ordinary field tools are not. A number without its provenance settles nothing. The catalogue's entry on RFC 2544 makes the same point about benchmarking: the finding is the conditions, not the figure.
The corporate history is a lesson in how instrument companies end up owned. A joint venture with Philips produced the ScopeMeter in 1987 and became an outright purchase in 1993; Danaher bought the whole company in 1998; Fortive was spun out of Danaher in 2016 with Fluke inside it. The measuring instruments outlived several of the arrangements that owned them.
A small fact for the record: fluke.com was registered in October 1986, among the first thirty .com domains in existence. An instruments manufacturer in Everett, Washington was on the commercial internet before almost anybody had a reason to be.
Founding stories
John Fluke Manufacturing Company
John Fluke Sr. - a Navy engineer and MIT graduate who had roomed with David Packard - built precision electrical measurement into a company whose name became the generic term for the instrument itself: to this day, field engineers 'grab the Fluke' regardless of what the label says. The rugged 87 multimeter (1988) is the archetype - drop-proof, trusted, yellow - and the Fluke Networks lineage carried the same DNA into cabling: if a link is certified, somewhere a Fluke tester signed for it.
The timeline
- The Fluke 87
The rugged true-RMS multimeter becomes THE meter - the industrial world's default instrument, still in production decades later, the physical embodiment of 'measurement you can bet on'.
- Into the cable plant
Fluke's DSP-series cable analyzers bring laboratory-grade measurement to structured cabling certification - pass/fail against the TIA/ISO standards, printed proof included; the category Fluke Networks comes to own.
- Danaher
Danaher acquires Fluke (~$625 million) - the instruments house joining the conglomerate whose portfolio moves will later split the Fluke Networks story down the middle.
Deal figure per the public record.
- AirMagnet
Fluke Networks acquires AirMagnet, the Wi-Fi analysis leader - spectrum and WLAN troubleshooting joining copper and fiber certification in the field bag.
- The split - read carefully
Danaher sells its communications businesses to NetScout (~$2.3 billion): Fluke Networks' ENTERPRISE visibility lines - OptiView, Visual TruView, AirMagnet - go with it. The cable-certification business does NOT: DSX CableAnalyzer, OptiFiber, and the certification franchise remain Fluke Networks. The handheld network-test line (LinkRunner, AirCheck) later leaves NetScout too - divested in 2018 and reborn as NetAlly in 2019.
Transaction structure per the public record; the NetAlly spin-out completed 2019.
- Fortive
Danaher splits; Fluke and Fluke Networks move to the new Fortive - where the yellow meters and the DSX certifiers continue, the standard instruments of the trades this site serves.
Flagship products and solutions
- Fluke 87 (and the meter line)The reference multimeter - the instrument 'Fluke' became the generic word for.
- DSX CableAnalyzer / OptiFiberThe structured-cabling and fiber certification standard - the tester whose report closes out installations worldwide.
- LinkRunner / AirCheck heritageThe handheld network and Wi-Fi test line born at Fluke Networks - continued today by NetAlly.
Key innovations
- Certification as a productFluke Networks turned 'does this link meet spec' into an instrument category with legal weight - the printed certification report is the cable plant's birth certificate.
- Ruggedness as a specificationThe 87's drop-proof, CAT-rated design made survivability part of accuracy - the field-instrument philosophy every hardened tool since inherits.
Main markets
Fluke (Fortive) remains the reference in electrical test; Fluke Networks owns cabling certification; the visibility and handheld branches live on at NetScout and NetAlly - one 1948 company, three present-day homes.
Analyst standing
- The pioneer entry closest to this site's readers' actual hands: the meter on the bench and the certifier in the bag - and the 2015 three-way split is worth knowing cold, because 'which Fluke' is a real procurement question.
- Fluke Corporation was founded in June 1948 by John Fluke Sr as the John Fluke Engineering Company, producing electrical test and measurement equipment; it moved to Seattle in 1952, listed over the counter in 1959, on the American Stock Exchange in 1967 and the New York Stock Exchange in 1980; a 1987 joint venture with Philips's test and measurement arm produced the ScopeMeter, and Fluke bought that business outright in 1993; Danaher acquired Fluke in 1998 and spun it into Fortive in 2016
- John Fluke was a friend and roommate of David Packard, the future co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, when both were employed at General Electric; in certain instrument categories Fluke competed directly with Hewlett-Packard, and in calibration equipment Fluke led the industry
- The company was founded in basement workshops in Connecticut, its early work focused on high-precision power meters and the VAW meter which measured voltage, current and power at once; the Fluke 8020A of 1977 was a handheld digital multimeter with a liquid crystal display and a custom analogue-to-digital converter chip
- Fluke Networks supplies cable certification testers such as the DSX CableAnalyzer series, which verify twisted-pair performance to Category 6A and Class EA and confirm compliance with specifications including ANSI/TIA-1152-A, alongside optical time-domain reflectometers for fibre and the AirMagnet range for wireless spectrum analysis