It's reassuring to know that even an industry veteran who has seen his company through three decades of extraordinary technology developments can still be impressed by gadgets that a whole generation take for granted.

Dr James Truchard, who cofounded National Instruments in 1976 and is now president and CEO, was in London today to open his company's NI Days conference for engineers at the QEII conference centre, just a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge. He said on his way there he saw people on the bridge taking pictures with their phones and even a few years ago "I wouldn't have believed it."

"A mobile phone in 1997, which is not that long ago, was a pretty simple device - it made a phone call and that was about it."

He described how the instrumentation industry has been through two technology waves, first the early 20th century era of the vacuum tube and RF instruments. Then came the transistor age, which was centre stage for 45 years or so. "This is kind of where I started my career in instrumentation, working in a lab as a student," he said.

Today, he said, we are into the software wave. Apple has built its huge success on iOS, so R&D developments in the lab propagate throughout its products, allowing developers to build a vast range of apps upon it - there is even an app for tuning your bagpipes, he noted.

"We want to do the same thing for embedded," he said. He sees an opportunity for NI's graphical system design software in instrumentation that parallels the iOS in consumer electronics. "To do for test and measurement what the spreadsheet did for financial analysis," he explained, or "to do for embedded what the PC did for the desktop."


-------------------------
Dickon Ross
Editor-in-Chief
The Institution of Engineering and Technology

Saving the Titanic, a docu-drama now showing on Channel 4 and out tomorrow on DVD, tells the story of the sinking a century ago from a perspective we've not seen much of before.

As I mentioned in my last blog entry introducing our Titanic special issue, the most familiar story is that of the passengers - especially the contrast between the rich first class passengers and the poor working class passengers in steerage.

Saving the Titanic looks at the story of a totally different group of people below decks on the Titanic - the engineers and electricians who fought to keep the ship afloat and the lights on for as long as they possibly could on the night of the 14th April 1912. It's a refreshing change - and it's well done. Engineers will enjoy the engineering details and it's fascinating to realise that while pandemonium went on above decks, crew still laboured below decks to slow the sinking.


-------------------------
Dickon Ross
Editor-in-Chief
The Institution of Engineering and Technology