The first Thermosense Conference held at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel in 1978 was in response to the “Carter Energy Crisis”. There were three sessions with a total of fifteen papers presented. The sessions all dealt with IR thermography with the first devoted to building heat loss, the second giving case studies and the third devoted to progress, pitfalls and potentials. There was also a poster session. Thermosense was sponsored initially by eight organizations. SPIE now sponsors Thermosense. The conference was dubbed “Thermosense” by one of the founders, Tom Lillesand, who, along with the other two founders, Alan Stevens and Bob Madding, organized and chaired the conference. About 200 people attended Thermosense I. Initially, Thermosense was completely focused on energy conservation in buildings. As IR technology evolved, applications were developed in numerous different areas. The current focus of IR thermography applications at Thermosense is primarily in the areas of maintenance diagnostics, building science, research and development, non-destructive testing and manufacturing processes. The application of IR thermography technology has also evolved with sophisticated data analysis systems and data acquisition systems, e.g. drones. Plus, more applications are being automated. The user base has expanded tremendously as the technology evolves making IR cameras easier to use and less costly.
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