Национальные инструменты: история и приобретение компанией Emerson

American multinational company
a company

National Instruments Corporation, doing business as NI, is an American multinational company with international operation. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it is a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. Common applications include data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Since October 2023, NI operates as Emerson Electric's test and measurement business unit after getting acquired. In 2022, the company sold products to more than 35,000 companies with revenues of US$1.66 billion. were working at the University of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratories. As part of a project conducting research for the U. S. Navy, the men were using early computer technology to collect and analyze data. Frustrated with the inefficient data collection methods they were using, the three decided to create a product for data collection. In 1976, working in the garage at Truchard's home, the three founded a new company. They attempted to incorporate under several names, including Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but all were rejected. Finally, they settled on the current name of National Instruments. With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group bought a PDP 11/04 minicomputer and, for their first project, designed and built a GPIB interface for it. Their first sale was the result of a cold call to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. 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 is now 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. 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. In 2002, the company dedicated the 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. 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. Digilent developed the open standard Pmod Interface.

On June 16, 2020, National Instruments announced that they were officially changing the company's name to "NI". 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. 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. After months of failed negotiations to purchase NI, industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric announced a hostile takeover bid for NI in an appeal directly to shareholders in early 2023. In April 2023, NI agreed to be sold for $8.2billion in an all cash deal. which was completed in October 2023. Within Emerson, NI now operate as a new Test & Measurement business group, headquartered in Austin, Texas.

The National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group is responsible for creating the electronic circuit design software NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard, 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". 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, the Electronics Workbench. Then the product line consisted of schematic capture, simulation product named MultiSIM and printed circuit board software called Ultiboard. In 2005, the company was acquired by National Instruments and rebranded as National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group.

Beginning in 1995, National Instruments has held an annual developer conference in Austin, NIWeek. The week long conference was held at the Austin Convention Center. Activities there were presented both by NI employees and external presenters. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, and various customers or university students also present papers on their work with NI tools.