Instruments and test equipment: Simplicity and sophistication are bywords as portables shrink and systems instrumentation grows

1973 trends like increasing computational power at eroding prices continued through 1974 despite runaway inflation in the rest of the world economy. Advances in digital- and analog-IC technologies, as well as in discrete and hybrid components, were primarily responsible. And one of the principal advances involved the microprocessor, introduced in laboratory instruments during 1973 and gathering momentum through 1974. Looking back over the year, highlights in instrumentation technology included: