“The Software is the Instrument”

In the early 1980s, Jeff Kodosky, cofounder of National Instruments, was inspired by the spreadsheet, which was created to mirror the way financial analysts worked. He thought that the same type of application could improve the way scientists and engineers performed tests and obtained measurements. In 1986, Kodosky and NI introduced LabVIEW, a graphical development environment for creating virtual test systems.

LabVIEW, according to Truchard, combined the concepts of drawing block diagrams and a user interface, or front panel. “You could quickly build a front panel and program it with block diagrams, so we were able to solve the problem of programming instrumentation in a very unique way,” he said. “We used the mantra, ‘To do for test and measurement what the spreadsheet did for financial analysts.’”

Introduced for the Macintosh platform, LabVIEW initially ce analog to digital and digital to analog converter technologies used in communications applications have made it possible to build very powerful measurement capabilities to work with PC technology, and this technology now exceeds that of traditional instrumentation.”