This account of Howard Cary's life covers the period from his birth to his initial contact with National Technology Laboratories and brief discussion of his later involvement with pH meter development. He devotes a fair amount of attention to his time at Los Angeles High School and Caltech and provides a detailed account of his varied work in the Los Angeles construction industry in the 1930s. H. G. Cary Co. and Allied Pipe Products Co. (family businesses), Lloyd and Casler Corporation, the NRA, and Caltech professors R. R. Martel and Franklin Thomas are referenced in Cary's autobiographical sketch.

Howard Cary (1908-1991) was a Caltech-educated engineer who joined National Technical Laboratories in the 1930s, where he was involved in the design of pH meters and spectrophotometers. In 1946, he co-founded the Applied Physics Corporation (later Cary Instruments), which developed the Cary Model 14 recording spectrophotometer.