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VISION FOR THE FUTURE

The primary motive for building this web site was the conviction that the enormous potential of small computers for implementing modest data acquisition and control systems is largely untapped. The lumbering mainframe computer is already an endangered species. Much smaller inexpensive machines that made up in accessibility and economy what they lacked in power undid it. Data acquisition systems are, I think, in somewhat of the same situation. The time is ripe for doing big things by means of thinking small.

 The fact is that the PC family lends itself very nicely to interactions with the “real world”. Once you begin to think of data input and output in forms other than just keyboards and printers, I think many applications will occur to you. At first I thought a little catalog of such applications might be helpful. But then I remembered the lesson of the microcomputer explosion of the last decade: that it was largely fueled by individuals and small groups thinking of things that hadn’t been done and using small and inexpensive computers to do them. “Computing power for people!” was a slogan one heard a lot in those days. I decided it was better just to throw in suggestions and allusions in this web site.