A Computer-Controlled System for Calibrating Detectors of Tea Laser Pulses

The National Bureau of Standards a t Boulder Colorado has developed a system for calibrating detectors used to measure TEA laser pulses El]. This system operates under the control of a desktop computer, which permits the rapid precise acquisition of data from several measuring devices during a testir:g period lasting approximately 5 minutes. Without the computer-controlled feature, the measurements would be quite laborious and time consuming and subject to the possible errors associated with transcribing and processing of data by hand. With the corputer the results are precisely calculated to 14 significant digits and are availablewithin 60 seconds after the veasuring process i s completed. This paper will deal ;nainly with the computer-controlled aspects of the system, although the optical setup and certain physical characteristics of the detectors will be described to promote a more complete understandicg of the system.