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Imagine you're working in an I & C room with numerous meters and display panels strewn over every conceivable wall, and you need to perform daily checks. Does this five gauge meter above look "easily readable from a distance" and do you trust that its "full size is used to assure big-gauge accuracy and sensitivity" as its data sheet claims? Common sense is all that should be required here to answer no.

   Founded in 1964, Vehicular Instrumentation Systems (VIS) was a privately controlled company under the brand name Dixson, which specialized in gauges, meters, and other measurement devices for the automotive industry. When Dixson was acquired by the global manufacturer Ametek thirty years later in 1995 as a specialty division, their aim spread to instrumentation control for a broad host of applications—which allowed the company to extend a rather lengthy foot in the door of, at the time, the burgeoning Digital Panel Meter market.

   Crompton Instruments has been making analog meters since 1881. That’s over 140 years of instrumentation that has served the industry faithfully despite its inherent limitations. Good help may be hard to find, but let’s get real here—it’s 2019, wouldn’t you say it’s about time for a meter made in this century?

   Obsolescence is inescapable. With each passing year analog technology is rendered more and more useless by the prodigious advances of its digital counterparts. This is due to a variety of issues, most notably: inaccuracy, inefficiency, subjectivity, and quite simply, age. Progress eliminates that which cannot keep pace. After all, the Model-T went to wayside when the Mustang became available.

   On December 2nd, 1942, the Chicago Pile-1, the world's first nuclear reactor, went critical and Enrico Fermi was christened "the Architect of the Nuclear Age". Born in 1901 in Rome, Fermi, an innovative physicist, would emigrate to the United States where his legacy would ultimately pave the way for Robert Oppenheimer to remark in 1945, "Now I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds."

The simplicity of the analog meter, along with its low manufacturing cost, has been offset by its unreliability, inaccuracy, fragility, and subjective interpretation.

    For nearly five decades the Bach Simpson 3623 meter has faithfully served Nuclear Power Plant control rooms in their instrumentation needs. As we approach twenty years into the new millenium that faithfullness is nearing collapse. Analog obsolescence cannot be ignored and is not going to simply disappear or disipate if we bury our heads in the proverbial sand.

   While the Nuclear Industry grapples with its looming analog obsolescence crisis, OTEK is stepping up to offer immediate and viable solutions. The DB40 has been an industry fixture for nearly a half century, but as with the rest of its analog brethren, it is facing extinction with the inexorable advancements in technology and changing industry standards.

   OTEK is proud to be on the forefront of the 21st century panel meter revolution and is constantly seeking new and innovative ways to benefit our customers in the industry. To that end we offer, from our New Technology Series, the model NTM-9 as a 100% Form, Fit, and Function replacement for Yokogawa 180/GE180 for Class1E Safety Related & Nuclear Qualified and MIL Standards 461, 167-1, 810, 901, and IE EE344. The NTM-9 is also Cyber Security Compliant!