A medium scale minicomputer system for laboratory measurements

Abstract
A flexible, powerful, and interactive computer‐assisted measurement system is described, based on a 16‐bit minicomputer and an extensive set of peripherals. A general purpose hardware‐software configuration is described which enables different users to computerize measurements in completely unrelated experiments, with minimal changes in interfacing. General purpose subroutines to control the digitizing of measurements are FORTRAN ‐callable from user programs. The result is a system for computer‐assisted measurements which may be used as a general purpose laboratory instrument, requiring only a knowledge of FORTRAN. Illustrative applications are described in several fields of physics. A comparative evaluation of other computerization schemes is given.