John M. Fluke, Sr. was granted a patent for the VAM (Volts, Amps, Watts) meter instrument in 1947 and founded Fluke Corporation in the basement of his home in Springdale, Connecticut, the following year. Fluke, who was born and raised in Seattle, moved his company to the Ballard neighborhood in 1952. In 1981, Fluke opened a 500,000 square feet, $26 million corporate headquarters in Everett for manufacture and research and development. As of 2019, Fluke Corporation is a world leader in the design, manufacture and sale of electronic test and measurement equipment and has expanded into the biomedical and network testing and monitoring fields.

In 1984, Fluke signed a $1.8 million contract with Beijing Radio Research Institute (BRRI) to supply component parts for a multimeter. BRRI would then assemble the meters at their plant for sale in China. This photo shows an employee assembling one of the meters at the Beijing facility.

Caption information sources: Fluke Companies, https://www.fluke.com/en-us/support/about-us/companies, "70 Years of Fluke," https://content.fluke.com/70th-anniversary/en/en-us.html.
Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.