As far as origin stories go, the technology behind helium leak detection is more glamorous than most. That is, when compared to the bubble test, a method many will remember experimenting with during childhood after a popped bicycle tire.
The mass spectrometer, which measures helium by atomic weight during a leak test, was developed during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s for testing nuclear weapon production. But it wasn’t until 1966 that the first commercially available helium leak detector appeared—the ASM 4, developed in France by the Alcatel vacuum group, which is now a division of Pfeiffer Vacuum.