Happy anniversaries
Jon Titus, Editorial Director -- Test & Measurement World, 9/15/2001
In this issue, T&MW celebrates two 20th anniversaries, the anniversary of IBM's Personal Computer and that of T&MW itself. Both the magazine and the computer got their start in the last half of 1981.
The IBM PC started its public life in August 1981 at an unveiling ceremony in New York City. The PC represented a big change for IBM, a large company used to doing everything itself. For the first time, IBM used outside suppliers for the majority of components and subsystems in a piece of equipment. And the PC resulted from the efforts of an entrepreneurial group spawned from within the staid atmosphere of the world's largest computer company.
To put IBM's introduction in perspective, we researched the PC's origins and have provided a brief history in the article, "Whence came the IBM PC?" Few of the people who saw IBM's new computer 20 years ago could have predicted how it would change the world. In my opinion, the advent of IBM's small computer generally changed the world for the better.
Our first historical article ends with the computer's introduction, but history continued as people found interesting uses for the new PC. In a second article, "PC instrumentation through the ages," Senior Technical Editor Martin Rowe examines how people started to use the PC as the heart of instruments that could acquire information about physical phenomena and also control equipment and experiments. Over the years, people have used the PC as a starting point for complex test systems we could only imagine a few years ago.
We've forgone the opportunity to drag out testimonials and engage in self congratulation upon our own anniversary. I find such attempts make dull reading and shed little light on the past. Instead, our technical editors look back over the past 20 years. We've concentrated on trends in ATE, RF testing, basic measurements, and inspection. In some cases, the adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," still holds true. I hope you'll enjoy our selections and comments.
T&MW got its start with an issue labeled "Fall 1981," which gave the editors and the salespeople time to gear up for the monthly issues that started in January 1982. Over the years, we've added extra issues that cover automotive-electronics test, PC-based test, and inspection/machine vision. We also launched Test & Measurement Europe, Test & Measurement Korea, the Automotive Test Report, and tmworld.com. OK, I guess I'm bragging a little. T&MW
