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Personal vision
November 3, 2006
Do you remember a magazine called "Personal Engineering & Instrumentation News?" I certainly do. PE&IN provided engineers with news, product reviews, and a lot of source code. PE&IN's editor, Paul Schreier, was in many ways a visionary of the instrumentation business, especially when it came to data acquisition.
Starting as a newsletter in 1984,
PE&IN grew into what some considered the Bible of PC-based engineering. But competition from
Test & Measurement World and others published by large companies eventually proved too much.
PE&IN's last issue appreared in December 1998.
Schreier predicted numerous industry trends with uncanny accuracy. A few didn't pan out, and others that were accurate have since lost their original accuracy because of newer technologies. A year or two after closing
PE&IN, Schreier moved from New Hampshire to Switzerland, where he still resides. Before leaving, Schreier kindly sent me a complete set of
PE&IN issues--less the first one.
Recently, while I was visiting a maker of data-acquisition equipment,
PE&IN arose in the conversation. It reminded me of Schreier's editorials. While looking through the
PE&IN series, I realized that many of Schreier's editorials are worth revisiting. Over the coming days and weeks, I'll look at Schreier's writings and comment on them. Because
PE&IN issues exist in print only, we'll scan the editorials and make them available for you to download. (Thanks to Paul for permission to republish his work). I'll begin with his most famous (or infamous) editorial, "What can stop the steamroller?"
Stay tuned.
Posted by Martin Rowe on November 3, 2006 | Comments (0)
