MCS Test Equipment Ltd are the UK distributors for Willtek, Tescom, Schomandl and Litepoint. We offer a wide range of leading edge test equipment products to meet the testing requirements of most wireless and Broadcast standards such as GSM, WCDMA, TETRA, WLAN 802.11, Bluetooth and WiMax 802.16. As well as offering test equipment sales, MCS also has a wide range of rental test equipment and used test equipment available.We provide high quality used test equipment for sale or rental and tailor our services to meet your individual needs.
The TC-2600A RFID tester is an integrated device that combines all the RFID Reader and Tag p.....
10/12/2009 20:23:47
Invention
Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) were developed in the late 19th century. At that time, the tubes were intended primarily to demonstrate and explore the physics of electrons (then known as cathode rays). Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the CRT oscilloscope as a physics curiosity in 1897, by applying an oscillating signal to electrically charged deflector plates in a phosphor-coated CRT. Applying a reference oscillating signal to the horizontal deflector plates and a test signal to the vertical deflector plates produced transient plots of electrical waveforms on the small phosphor screen. The first dual beam oscilloscope was developed in the late 1930s by the British company A.C.Cossor (later acquired by Raytheon). The CRT was not a true double beam type but used a split beam by placing a third plate between the vertical deflection plates. It was widely used during WWII for the development and servicing of radar equipment. Although extremely useful for examining the performance of pulse circuits it was not calibrated so could not be used as a measuring device. It was however useful in producing response curves of IF circuits and consequently a great aid in their accurate alignment.
The triggered oscilloscope
Oscilloscopes became a much more useful tool in 1946 when Howard C. Vollum and Jack Murdock invented the triggered oscilloscope,Tektronix Model 511. The first oscilloscopes used analog technology in which the electron beam traced on the oscilloscope's screen directly traced the input voltage's waveform. It would start a horizontal trace when the input voltage exceeded an adjustable threshold. Triggering allows stationary display of a repeating waveform, as multiple repetitions of the waveform are drawn over the exact same trace on the phosphor screen -- without triggering, multiple copies of the waveform are drawn in different places, giving an incoherent jumble or a moving image on the screen.
As oscilloscopes have become more powerful over time, enhanced triggering options allow capture and display of more complex waveforms. For example, trigger holdoff is a feature in most modern oscilloscopes that can be used to define a certain period following a trigger during which the oscilloscope will not trigger again. This makes it easier to establish a stable view of a waveform with multiple edges which would otherwise cause another trigger.
Tektronix
Vollum and Murdock went on to found Tektronix, the first manufacturer of calibrated oscilloscopes (which included a graticule on the screen and produced plots with calibrated scales on the axes of the screen). Later developments by Tektronix included the development of multiple-trace oscilloscopes for comparing signals either by time-multiplexing (via chopping or trace alternation) or by the presence of multiple electron guns in the tube. In 1973, Tektronix introduced the Direct View Bistable STorage Tube (DVBST), which allowed observing single pulse waveforms rather than (as previously) only repeating wave forms. By the late 1970s, with transistor components rather than vacuum tubes, Tektronix was selling oscilloscopes on which the signal trace traveled across the screen faster than the speed of light. Using micro-channel plates, the most-advanced analogue oscilloscopes (for example, the Tek 7104 mainframe) could display a visible trace (or allow the photography) of a single-shot event even when running at these extremely fast sweep speeds.
Digital oscilloscopes
The first Digital Storage Oscilloscopes (DSO) was invented by Walter LeCroy (who founded the LeCroy Corporation, based in New York, USA) after producing high-speed digitizers for the research centre CERN in Switzerland. LeCroy remain one of the three largest manufacturers of oscilloscopes in the world and currently boast a scope with a 100GHz band-width - the fastest in the world.
Starting in the 1980s, digital oscilloscopes became prevalent. Digital storage oscilloscopes use a fast analog-to-digital converter and memory chips to record and show a digital representation of a waveform, yielding much more flexibility for triggering, analysis, and display than is possible with a classic analog oscilloscope. Unlike its analog predecessor, the digital storage oscilloscope can show pre-trigger events, opening another dimension to the recording of rare or intermittent events and troubleshooting of electronic glitches. As of 2006 most new oscilloscopes (aside from education and a few niche markets) are digital.
Digital scopes rely on effective use of the installed memory and trigger functions: not enough memory and the user will miss the events they want to examine; if the scope has a large memory but does not trigger as desired, the user will have difficulty finding the event.
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