About the Author: Slava Artaev
Viatcheslav «Slava» Artaev is a leading authority in time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS). Slava was, and remains, a core member of the team behind the LECO Pegasus GC-TOFMS platform. Today, he continues to drive innovation at LECO as the Technical Director of Separation Science Research and Development.
Reflections from Slava Artaev, 30 years later
Thirty years ago, on March 3, 1996, we stood in a crowded exhibition hall at Pittcon in Chicago and switched on something we believed could change analytical chemistry. At the time, it did not feel historic—it felt fragile.
There were only a handful of us who understood how precarious that moment was. Kevin McNitt and I had spent years working toward that instrument—the first LECO Pegasus Gas Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (GC-TOFMS). For everyone else, it was simply another new system at a trade show. For us and a few others, it represented years of experiments, sleepless nights, and a belief that time-of-flight mass spectrometry could finally unlock something that chromatography had been waiting for.
The Beginning
The story began in Okemos, Michigan, at a small startup called Meridian Analytical Instruments. Kevin and I were working there on what would become the first practical fast time-of-flight detector for gas chromatography.
This technology would go on to later become Pegasus.
At Pittcon in 1995 we presented the FCD650 Fast Chromatographic Detector, a prototype system capable of acquiring full mass spectra at extremely high speeds. Scientists immediately recognized the potential. Complex mixtures could suddenly be analyzed without losing information from very narrow chromatographic peaks.
Not long afterwards, LECO Corporation acquired Meridian Analytical Instruments and invited us to continue the work inside a much larger organization. Suddenly, the challenge changed. We were no longer building prototypes. We had to create a fully commercial instrument, and we had to do it quickly.
Naming the Pegasus
Every instrument eventually needs a name. During those early months of development, we talked often about speed, power, and the idea of capturing information that other instruments missed. Someone suggested «Pegasus», the winged horse from Greek mythology. The name stuck immediately.
The Pegasus symbolized speed and flight, but it also captured the feeling that the instrument was carrying analytical chemistry somewhere new. It was not simply another mass spectrometer. It represented a different way of observing complex chemical systems.
Eight Months to Build an Instrument
The timeline was unforgiving. From the moment LECO acquired Meridian, we had roughly eight months to turn our ideas into a complete GC-TOFMS system ready for Pittcon 1996. Everything had to be developed simultaneously: electronics, vacuum systems, ion optics, software, mechanical design, all of it. The entire LECO team worked relentlessly to meet the deadline.
In the end, three instruments were built in the first production batch. The final system was completed only days before it had to be shipped for exhibition.
The Yellow Page
One of the images I still keep from that time is a yellow notebook page filled with handwritten notes and numbers.
It was part of my laboratory notebook from the final testing phase before Pittcon. The page shows the first GC-TOFMS test results, recorded while we were verifying that the system could capture extremely fast chromatographic peaks.
At the time it was simply documentation, another page in a long series of experiments. Looking back now, that yellow page feels like a small historical artifact. It records the moment when we realized the instrument was finally working the way we had hoped.
Chicago, March 1996
When the Pegasus instrument arrived at Pittcon in Chicago, we had only a short window to set up and test it. Our one spare day turned out to be essential.
When we first powered the instrument in the exhibition hall, nothing happened. The problem turned out to be electrical. The power available in the hall was different from what the instrument expected. Hours passed while we traced cables, adjusted connections, and tried to stabilize the electronics. Eventually, the system came alive. By the morning of March 3, 1996, the Pegasus was ready.
One of the demonstrations we showed involved fast GC separations of chlorinated compounds, revealing how the system could record complete spectra across peaks only fractions of a second wide. For many scientists watching the screen that day, the implications were obvious. This instrument could capture information that previously disappeared.
When the Data Speaks
What I remember most clearly from that week is not the stress of building the instrument. It is the reactions from the scientists who saw it working. People gathered around the booth as spectra appeared on the screen. Some asked technical questions. Others simply watched. Many realized quickly what this meant for their work. Complex mixtures, environmental samples, petrochemicals, aromas and flavors, all of them could now be studied with far greater clarity. The Pegasus did not just produce faster data. It allowed chemists to see more of what was actually present in their samples.
After Pittcon
The work continued quickly after the exhibition. Later that year, at the 1996 ASMS conference in Portland, we presented the first scientific results generated with the Pegasus system.
From that point forward the platform continued to evolve. New generations of Pegasus instruments expanded performance, introduced advanced data processing (such as spectral deconvolution), and eventually enabled modern multidimensional techniques like GCxGC-TOFMS.
What began as an ambitious project inside a small startup had become a new analytical platform.
Thirty Years Later
Three decades later, GC-TOFMS systems derived from those early Pegasus instruments are used in laboratories around the world.
They help scientists study environmental pollutants, authenticate food products, explore metabolic pathways, and understand complex chemical systems across countless industries.
When I think back to that week in Chicago, I still remember the moment the instrument finally produced its first data in the exhibition hall. After months of uncertainty, the system worked. And with that first spectrum, the Pegasus truly took flight.
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