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W
hat is a “virtual instrument?” What is a “vir- fined such parameters as voltage, current, and power, and the
tual” anything? A virtual item is one that exists new field of electricity was born.
in function, but not in actual form. Does that Our forefathers developed an electrical technology. They
mean that a virtual instrument really doesn’t generated and distributed electricity, moved machines, lit
exist? No. It exists, but not in the form that we are used to see- homes and offices, and transported goods and materials. It be-
ing. OK, so, what’s a virtual instrument? came increasingly important, as time went on, to measure the
First, a little history. A few hundred years ago, we didn’t electrical parameters they used. They developed measuring
know much of anything electrical. Then came the work of instruments that became more precise as the technology im-
Ohm, Oersted, Ampere, Watt, and a host of others. We de- proved. For most of the 20th century, measurements concen-
Division of Labor
There were concurrent developments in other fields. The big-
gest ones were in the computer field. Capacity increased
while size decreased. But the two fields, instrumentation and
computers, remained separate. Then, the microprocessor
was developed, and computational size, cost, and power dis-
sipation plummeted, allowing pieces of computers to fit into
other devices.
Computers at this time were still slow, limited-capacity
machines requiring detailed programming to perform their
tasks. Bulk storage was limited to tape or large disks and
drums. Essentially, computers were off-line instruments. One
used them for further processing of data after first recording
the measurements on disks or tape.
That is not to say that computation didn’t enter the instru-
ments. It soon became fashionable to include computation ca-
pacity in most of them. However, these were special-purpose
trated on electrical parameters, voltage, current, power, devices, custom developed for their specific operations. There
power factor, frequency, etc. were transducer linearizers, Fourier transformers, graphing
and display drivers, and similar single- and limited-purpose
devices. But they, with the advent of microelectronics, pro-
The Electronics Age vided the next level of utility to instrumentation.
The electronics age began with vacuum tubes, radios, and It was still not possible, during the 1980s and early ’90s, to
then, television. During World War II, a plethora of electronics use full commercial computers for realtime applications,
was developed for the military, changing the course of navi- mainly due to their relatively slow performance. Yet, the need
gation, communications, and control from mechanical and vi- for additional processing became more obvious since instru-