National Instruments

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Redirect Template:Peacock Template:Infobox company The National Instruments Corporation, referred to as NI, is an American multinational company headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international operations. It is a producer of automated test equipment, semiconductor production equipment, and virtual instrumentation software. Common applications include data acquisition (DAQ), instrument control, system management, and machine learning and vision. Following its acquisition by Emerson Electric, NI has operated as the company’s test and measurement business unit since October 2023.Template:Citation needed

In 2022, the company sold products to more than 35,000 companies worldwide, with revenues of US$1.66 billion.<ref name=10K />

History

Founding

In the early 1970s, James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin were employed at the University of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratories.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While working on a project for the U.S. Navy, they utilized early computer technology to collect and analyze data. Dissatisfied with the existing data collection methods, the trio decided to create a new product for this purpose. In 1976, they founded a company while working in Truchard's garage.<ref name="seegmiller">Template:Cite web</ref> They initially attempted to incorporate under names such as Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but these were rejected. Ultimately, they settled on the name National Instruments.<ref name="schneiderman">Template:Cite web</ref>

With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group purchased a PDP-11/04 minicomputer and embarked on their first project by designing and building a GPIB interface for it.<ref name="ni">Template:Cite web</ref> Their initial sale stemmed from a cold call to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio.<ref name="schneiderman" /> At that time, the three founders were still employed at the University of Texas.

In 1977, they hired their first full-time employee, Kim Harrison-Hosen, who was responsible for handling orders, billing, and customer inquiries. By the end of that year, they had sold three boards, and to encourage further business, the company produced and distributed a mailer to 15,000 users of the PDP-11 minicomputer. As sales began to rise, they were able to relocate to a dedicated office space in 1978, occupying a 600-square-foot office at 9513 Burnet Road in Austin.<ref name="ni" />

1980s

At the end of the 1970s, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit. In 1980, Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin quit their jobs to devote themselves full-time to National Instruments. At the end of the year, they moved the company to a larger office, renting Template:Convert of office space. To assist in generating revenue, the company undertook numerous special projects, including a fuel-pump credit-card system and a waveform generator for U.S. Navy sonar acoustic testing. In 1981, the company reached the $1 million sales mark, leading them to move to a Template:Convert office in 1982.<ref name="ni"/>

In 1983, National Instruments developed its first GPIB board to connect instruments to IBM PCs. With the arrival of the Macintosh computer, Kodosky began a research initiative with the assistance of student researchers at the University of Texas into ways to exploit the new interface. This led to the creation of NI's flagship product, the LabVIEW graphical development platform for the Macintosh computer, which was released in 1986.<ref name="ni"/> The software allows engineers and scientists to program graphically by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. The following year, a version of LabVIEW, known as LabWindows, was released for the DOS environment.<ref name="ni2"/>

By 1986, the company had 100 employees.<ref name="ni2"/> The following year, NI opened its first international branch in Tokyo in 1987.<ref name="ni2"/>

1990s

File:National Instruments logo.svg

Logo used from 1995 to 2020

After outgrowing its rented space, NI moved to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway in 1990, which the company purchased in 1991. That building, located along Lake Austin near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills = Bridge Point."<ref name="ni2"/>

NI received its first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later in the same year, they introduced Signal Conditioning Extensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) to expand the signal-processing capabilities of the PC, and in 1992, LabVIEW was first released for Windows-based PCs and Unix workstations. NI also created the National Instruments Alliance Partner program.<ref name="ni2"/> In 1993, the company reached the milestone of $100 million in annual sales. To attract C/C++ programmers, later that year, NI introduced LabWindows/CVI. The following year, an employee began experiments with the relatively new World Wide Web and developed natinst.com, the company's very first web page.

The company began to run out of room on their approximately Template:Convert campus. In 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, located at a Template:Convert site along North Mopac Boulevard in northern Austin. By this time, NI had reached 1,000 employees.<ref name="ni3"/> The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, contains dedicated "play" areas, including basketball and volleyball courts, an employee gym, and a campus-wide walking trail. Each of the buildings on the campus is lined with windows and features an open floor plan. <ref name="ni2">Template:Cite web</ref> Employees had been granted stock in the privately held company as part of their compensation packages. When the company chose to go public in 1995, over 300 current and former employees owned stock. The company was listed on the Nasdaq exchange as NATI.

By the late 1990s, the more advanced DAQ boards were provided by the company, which could replace vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system.<ref name="ni2" /> With the company's acquisition of Georgetown Systems Lookout software, NI products were further incorporated into applications run on the factory-floor.<ref name="ni3" /> By 1996, the company had reached $200 million in annual sales and was named to Forbes magazine's 200 Best Small Companies list.<ref name="ni3">Template:Cite web</ref> Over the next several years, NI released machine vision software and hardware. NI also introduced the CompactPCI-based PXI, an open industry standard for modular measurement and automation, and NI TestStand, which provides for tracking high-volume manufacturing tests.<ref name="ni3" />

2000s

User traffic and e-commerce activity increased significantly after the company acquired the ni.com domain and began investing in web technologies. They introduced the NI Developer Zone, which provides end-user developers access to example programs, sample code, and development tips, as well as forums for users and NI employees.<ref name="ni3"/>

In the 2000s, NI began exporting most of its manufacturing overseas by opening its Template:Convert manufacturing plant in Debrecen, Hungary. NI now manufactures nearly 90% of its production in Debrecen and has expanded several times in the last decade. In 2011, with a multimillion-dollar grant from the government, NI increased production in Debrecen by approximately 20%. With state-of-the-art automation processes, headcount increased by only 2%.<ref>National Instruments celebrates ten years in HungaryTemplate:Webarchive</ref> In 2002, the company dedicated the Template:Convert Building C on their Mopac campus, which became the headquarters for the company's R&D operations. Upon completion of this building, the NI campus finally had enough capacity to move all Austin-based employees to a single location.<ref name="ni3" />

The primary company model used was business-to-consumer (B2C). By 2006, NI had opened 21 sales offices in Europe, 12 in the Asia/Pacific region, and additional offices in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.<ref name="ni3" /> Research and Development centers are located in the United States, Germany, India, Romania, China, Canada, and Malaysia.

In 2005 NI acquired Measurement Computing,<ref name="mcc"> Template:Cite web</ref> a provider of low-cost data acquisition products.

2010s

In January 2013, National Instruments acquired all outstanding shares of Digilent Inc., which became a wholly owned subsidiary.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Digilent was founded in 2000 by two Washington State University electrical engineering professors, Clint Cole and Gene Apperson, and grew to become a multinational corporation with sales of test and development products to universities.<ref name="MaxMax2020">Template:Cite web</ref> Digilent developed the open standard Pmod Interface.

2020s

On June 16, 2020, National Instruments announced that they were officially changing the company's name to "NI".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On May 4, 2021, NI announced the acquisition of monoDrive, a provider of simulation software for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle development.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In March 2022, it was announced that NI had completed the acquisition of Heinzinger Automotive GmbH, the electronic vehicle systems business of Rosenheim-based Heinzinger Electronic GmbH.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After months of failed negotiations to purchase NI, industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric launched a hostile takeover bid in early 2023, appealing directly to shareholders.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In April 2023, NI agreed to be sold for $8.2Template:Nbspbillion in an all-cash deal.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> which was completed in October 2023. Within Emerson, NI now operates as theTest & Measurement business group, headquartered in Austin, Texas.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Products

National Instruments' engineering software includes:

• LabVIEW, a graphical development environment
• LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite, for rapid deployment of communication systems
• LabWindows/CVI, an ANSI C programming environment
• Measurement Studio, a set of components for Microsoft Visual Studio
• NI TestStand, for test execution sequencing
• NI VeriStand, for real-time test
• NI DIAdem, for data management
• NI Multisim, for circuit design
• NI Ultiboard, for PCB design
• NI Vision Builder, for automated Inspection
• NI LabVIEW SignalExpress, for data logging
• NI Switch Executive, for switch management
• NI Requirements Gateway, for requirements tracking

National Instruments' hardware platforms include:

• NI CompactRIO, programmable FPGA-based industrial controller<ref>CompactRIO, National Instruments</ref>
• NI roboRIO, a robotics controller used standard in the FIRST Robotics Competition
• NI CompactDAQ, data acquisition systems for USB and Ethernet<ref>CompactDAQ, National Instruments</ref>
• PXI and PXIe Platforms, a modular instrumentation standard with more than 1,500 products<ref>PXI Platform, National Instruments</ref>
• STS, a production-ready ATE solution for RF, mixed-signal, and MEMS<ref>What Is the Semiconductor Test System (STS)?, National Instruments</ref>
• NI ELVIS, a multi-instrument lab station for teaching technology<ref>NI ELVIS III, National Instruments</ref>

Groups

Electronics Workbench Group

The National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group<ref>NI EWG rebranding, National Instruments</ref> is responsible for creating the electronic circuit design software NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard,<ref>NI Multisim - Overview, National Instruments website</ref> which was previously a Canada-based company that first produced MultiSIM, and integrated ULTIboard with it.

Interactive Image Technologies was founded in Toronto, Ontario, by Joe Koenig, and specializes in producing educational movies and documentaries. When the government of Ontario needed an educational tool for teaching electronics in colleges, the company created a circuit simulator called the Electronics Workbench. In 1996, Interactive Image Technologies appointed its vice president, Roy Bryant, as Chief Operating Officer to oversee the day-to-day operations of the company and to grow the company's electronic design automation (EDA) products. Bryant is credited with "overseeing the development and marketing of the company's Electronics Workbench EDA product".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1998, the company started a strategic partnership with another electronic design automation company named Ultimate Technology from Naarden, Netherlands, who was the European market leader in printed circuit board design software, with their package ULTIboard. Like Electronics Workbench, founder James Post gained PR fame when he organized the distribution of 180,000 demo floppy disks via electronics magazines in Europe.

In 1999, the companies merged and renamed themselves after their most well known product, Electronics Workbench. The product line then consisted of schematic capture software, the MultiSIM simulation program, and the printed circuit board design tool, Ultiboard.

In 2005, the company was acquired by National Instruments and rebranded as National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group.

Community

Beginning in 1995, NI has held an annual developer conference in Austin, NIWeek. The week-long event was hosted at the Austin Convention Center, featuring presentations by NI employees and external speakers. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, while customers and university students present papers on their work with NI tools.<ref name="ni3"/>

See also

• List of companies based in Austin, Texas
• Mechatronics

External links

• Template:Official