Instrumentation Reference Book, 4th Edition

Chapter 1. The Automation Practicum

W. Boyes

1.1. Introduction

In the years since this book was first published, there have been incredible changes in technology, in sociology, and in the way we work, based on those changes. Who in the early 1970s would have imagined that automation professionals would be looking at the outputs of sensors on handheld devices the size of the “communicators” on the science fiction TV show Star Trek? Yet by late 2007, automation professionals could do just that (see Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1.

Courtesy of Transpara Corporation.

There is now no way to be competitive in manufacturing, or no way to do science or medicine, without ...