The name techtron is derived from two words ‘Technical’ and ‘Electronic’. Techtron Appliances was founded by Geoffrey Frew in 1938. The company manufactured electronic items only for order in Melbourne, Australia. In 1957, Techtron won a tender in order to build electronic modules used for Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer. In 1962, Techtron got a license from CSIRO and it allowed them to produce AAS instruments using high quality imported Carl Zeiss monochromators. The electronics were made locally. In 1964, Techtron made the first AA instrument (Techtron-AA3), and displayed it in the Pittsburgh Conference in the USA.

In1967, its merger with Varian Associates brought huge strength to Techtron in terms of manufacturing methods, finances, and a world-wide distribution network. The company came to be called as Varian Techtron Pvt. Limited. In 1970, Frew donated a huge amount to the Australian Academy of Science. The Geoffrey Fellowships enabled qualified scientists from abroad to come to Australia to take part in the Spectroscopy Conference. They got opportunity to visit scientific centres around the country. In 1990 there were around 400 employees in the Melbourne factory. In 1991, Varian, Inc. was established to handle the vacuum products, scientific instrumentations and electronics goods manufacturing units of Varian Associates, Inc.