Working out of his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harold Hindman realized that no testing machine available was capable of adequately evaluating new textiles such as nylon and rayon. His colleague George Burr, however, was working with a new device called a strain gauge that was being used to evaluate building materials used in earthquake zones.
 
Harold and George put their heads together and created a new testing instrument that used a strain gauge as a load cell transducer. This innovation allowed the new machine to test at a much higher frequency than anything else available at the time, perfect for evaluating textiles.