IEEE-488 - Origins

Origins

In the late 1960s, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was manufacturing various automated test and measurement instruments, such as digital multimeters and logic analyzers. They developed the HP Interface Bus (HP-IB) to enable easier interconnection between instruments and controllers (computers and other instruments).

The bus was relatively easy to implement using the technology at the time, using a simple parallel electrical bus and several individual control lines. For example, the HP 59501 Power Supply Programmer and HP 59306A Relay Actuator were both relatively simple HP-IB peripherals implemented only in TTL logic, using no microprocessor.

Other manufacturers copied HP-IB, calling their implementation the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB), and it became a de facto standard for automated and industrial instrument control. As GPIB became popular, it was formalized by various standards organizations.

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