Abstract
The art as well as the science of data acquisition and analysis in the IR and visible regions of the spectrum has a long and often elegant history. Nevertheless, this review is a discussion of the state-of-the-art in data acquisition and analysis in spectrophotometry. String galvanometers and huge gratting circles and the Herculean labors of those persons who acquired early data, though fascinating, are left to a more competent historian of spectroscopy.