Measurement

 

Measurement :

Measurement techniques have been of immense importance ever since the start of human civilization, when measurements were first needed to regulate the transfer of goods in barter trade to ensure that exchanges were fair. The industrial revolution during the nineteenth century brought about a rapid development of new instruments and measurement techniques to satisfy the needs of industrialized production tech[1]niques. Since that time, there has been a large and rapid growth in new industrial technology.

 

This has been particularly evident during the last part of the twentieth century, encouraged by developments in electronics in general and computers in partic[1]ular. This, in turn, has required a parallel growth in new instruments and measurement techniques. The massive growth in the application of computers to industrial process control and monitoring tasks has spawned a parallel growth in the requirement for instruments to measure, record and control process variables. As modern production techniques dictate working to tighter and tighter accuracy limits, and as economic forces limiting production costs become more severe, so the requirement for instruments to be both accurate and cheap becomes ever harder to satisfy. This latter problem is at the focal point of the research and development efforts of all instrument manufacturers.

 

In the past few years, the most cost-effective means of improving instrument accuracy has been found in many cases to be the inclusion of digital computing power within instruments themselves. These intelligent instruments therefore feature prominently in current instrument manufacturers’ catalogues