EE at work: The precise science of instrumentation: The EE who goes into instrumentation design must be prepared to deal with very demanding requirements and be a perfectionist at heart

High tech demands exquisite precision. When time is measured in nanoseconds and tolerances in parts per million, it is imperative that the instruments used be as exact as the state of the art can make them. For want of an off pulse in a gate, a whole system may crash; for want of 0.5 millivolt, a wrong diagnosis in a serious illness may be made.