ABSTRACT
Since 1905, when William W. Coblentz obtained the first infrared spectrum (1), vibrational spectroscopy has become an important analytical tool in research and in technical fields. In the late 1960s, infrared spectrometry was generally believed to be an instrumental technique of declining popularity that was gradually being superseded by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS) for structural determinations and by gas and liquid chromatography for quantitative analysis.
