When many companies start off, they are flanked with business proposals and specialists at the helm. Radiation detection company Landauer, Inc. (NYSE:LDR) was started “with a few borrowed dollars and a prayer.”

Or so the story goes. The company, which leases and sells radiation detection monitors to hospitals, medical offices, laboratories, nuclear power plants, was first started in 1954 by Robert S. Landauer, Jr., after returning from service in World War II. (Landauer took to radiation monitoring in the 1930s as he made the rounds with father, who consulted with radiologists.)

In the beginning, Landauer, Jr. was a jack-of-all-trades within his budding company, marking film, processing badges and writing up reports. Purdue University and General Electric eventually took chances on his product and helped establish his brand and by the '60s, the company reached a milestone in processing rates. The rest, as they say, is history, but one that is still radiating today.

Landauer typically enters into 12-month agreements with its customers and provides them with badges that are to be worn by employees for one to three months. Customers can include hospitals medical offices, laboratories and nuclear power plants. The badges are then returned to Landauer and analyzed so that a report indicating radiation exposure levels can be furnished to the customer. In addition, the company provides services related to analyzing and maintaining records on exposure findings from its monitors, and also offers radon gas detection services.

It’s been a long road since 1954, but today the $541-million market cap company is flourishing in a niche market and buoyant even through the current stock market maelstrom. In the past 52 weeks, Landauer shares have climbed . . .

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