E0305

The E0305 is a digital industrial process monitor, made in the microproduction workshop of the ICE research institute in Bucharest, where it was designed [1]. Three units were made, for the Slatina aluminium works [1]. They were digital voltmeters that replaced the hard-to-read analogue meters on the 200 electrolysis cells, built to work without interruption in a hall full of dust and fluorine, with common-mode voltages of up to 1000 V [2]. In spring 1981 two came back for repair, bent by the pneumatic hammer used to break the crust on the cells [2].

ICE’s laboratory for electronic instruments for measuring electrical quantities designed all the institute’s generations of oscilloscopes, voltmeters, multimeters, signal generators, frequency meters, logic analysers, RLC bridges and stabilised AC power supplies; they went into production at IEMI or in ICE’s own microproduction workshop, and equipped industrial laboratories and production lines as well as teaching and research laboratories [1]. In the 1970s and 1980s about half of the components of measuring instruments were imported; after 1980 about three quarters were Romanian [1].