E0201

The E0201 is a universal counter, made by IEMI in Bucharest and designed at the ICE research institute [1]. It was developed together with an analogue-to-digital converter for measuring DC voltage [1]. In 1969 ICE added a power supply and a drawer that turned it into a digital voltmeter (0.1 mV – 1000 V), using voltage-to-frequency conversion; its performance was compared with similar Solartron, Philips and Tekelec instruments, and FEMI had made 500 units by the end of 1975 [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].

It has a six-digit display using telephone-type incandescent lamps, with a decimal point [3]. IEMI’s production table lists 27 units made in 1971 [3].

The memoirs of an IEMI engineer describe it as a 20 MHz digital frequency meter with a display of telephone lamps, whose assembly he supervised at FEMI in 1972–1974 [4].

Annex III.2.7 describes it as a universal counter for counting pulses and measuring frequency, period, the ratio of two frequencies and time intervals, for research and factory laboratories, with a maximum frequency of 1 MHz and a resolution of 1 µs; the memoirs above give 20 MHz [5].