E1100

The E1100 is a compact data acquisition system, made in the microproduction workshop of the ICE research institute in Bucharest, where it was designed [1]. Approved in 1981, it was the first Romanian measuring equipment controlled by a microprocessor (8080) [1]. The East German 8080 also linearised the thermocouple characteristics and made the logger programmable (date and time, limits, use of each channel); its 30-channel input multiplexer used reed relays built at ICE, keeping contact thermal EMF below 5 µV, and it weighed 16 kg [2]. Its designer compared it with the Solartron Compact Logger 3430, and did not know whether any were made after its approval, perhaps because of the shortage of imported components [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].