To securely heat treat a workpiece with a desired temperature profile in a heat treatment apparatus.

A heater 3 is driven to follow a desired temperature profile based upon an output of a measuring thermocouple 6 disposed in the vicinity of an article 2 to be heated, and after history data of the output of a controlling thermocouple 4 disposed in the vicinity of the heater 3 is stored in a controlling thermocouple history data memory, the stored history data is regarded to be a set temperature profile and the heater 3 is controlled to follow the set temperature profile, whereby there is reproduced based upon the output of the controlling thermocouple 4 the same temperature control as the case where a desired set temperature profile is realized by achieving feedback control performing temperature detection in the vicinity of he article 2 to be heated. After the history data is taken, the measuring thermocouple may be removed.