This memo recounts a mostly off the record meeting involving members of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce about potential causes of public resistance to placing air pollution monitoring or reducing instruments in automobiles. The Mr. Heinen referred to in the memo is likely automotive engineer, Charles Heinen, who by the 1970s was the chief engineer for Chrysler and director of Chrysler Emission Control.

Beckman Instruments, Inc. became interested in measuring, controlling, and fighting air pollution in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when company president Arnold O. Beckman became the scientific adviser to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s Air Pollution Control Officer. Many of the instruments that were developed by Beckman Instruments in the 1940s and 1950s as standalone items became incorporated into or re-purposed as smog-fighting systems.