Founded as Kay Electric Co. later renamed Kay Elemetrics Corp., the original partners, previously engineers at Bell Labs in Whippany, New Jersey, designed electronic measurement instruments used in industrial, university research, and military applications. Among these was the first commercially available sound spectrograph (1951), called the Sona-Graph, which continues to be a benchmark analysis tool of acoustic signals in the diverse fields of medicine, speech pathology, linguistics, bioacoustics, forensics, and military intelligence. In the 60s - 70s, Kay was mostly active in radio frequency (radar and TV) industrial electronics. RF attenuators, which originated during this period of the company's history, continue to be a part of Kay's product line today. In the late 1970's, the company shifted its emphasis from industrial electronics to speech analysis instrumentation to complement the widely used Sona-Graph. The company now has a complete line of instrumentation used internationally in over 30 countries (see International Representatives) by speech pathologists, otolaryngologists, and linguists. These include acoustic, palatometric, electroglottographic, aerodynamic, videostroboscopic, and swallowing instrumentation. In March 2005, PENTAX Medical Company, a division of PENTAX of America, Inc. ("PENTAX"), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of PENTAX Corporation of Japan, acquired all of the operating assets of Kay Elemetrics. Kays operations now continue as a division of PENTAX Medical Company under the name KayPENTAX.
