ABSTRACT
Like instrumentation systems of the past, today’s instrumentation systems build on widely accepted contemporary technologies. In the early days of instrumentation, the jeweled movement of clocks in the nineteenth century was first adapted to build analog meters. In the 1930s, when engineers began to accept the variable capacitor, variable resistor, and vacuum tubes as pieces of the radio, the first electronic instruments were introduced using the same components. As display technologies improved for use on the first televisions, oscilloscopes and analyzers began using the same technology to display the user’s measurements. These first steps of integrating relevant technologies into instrumentation set the stage for today’s virtual instrumentation.
