National Instruments -- The Origins of NI
The idea for starting a company first occurred to me in 1967 when I completed my master's thesis at the University of Texas at Austin. I had tasted success by developing an ultra-low noise amplifier used widely for measurement applications. The development made me feel ready to go out on my own, but I decided to stay at the University of Texas and pursue a Ph.D. When I completed my doctorate degree, my thoughts again turned to a business venture. Early in 1976, I met with Jeff Kodosky and Bill Nowlin, associates of mine from the Applied Research Labs at the University of Texas at Austin, and made plans to form a start-up company. We soon decided that our inaugural product would be a general-purpose interface bus (GPIB), with which engineers and scientists could connect a measurement device to a computer to take readings, such as temperature, voltage, and pressure. By April 1976, Jeff, Bill, and I were ready to start designing our product. We chose a number of possible names for our company -- Texas Digital, Longhorn Instruments, and several permutations of our initials. All of them were rejected, however, when we submitted our first application for incorporation. In the next round of names submitted, much to our astonishment, we received our first choice -- National Instruments. After borrowing $10,000 on our signatures from a local bank, we bought a computer and started product development. We first used my garage workshop and then rotated between our houses. Our GPIB prototype was complete in April 1977. About that time, NI moved into its first 300-square-foot office. We sold our first unit in 1977 on a cold call to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. By the end of that year, we had shipped a total of three boards and hired a part-time administrative assistant. In July 1978, NI moved to a 600-square-foot facility, but by September the company was reaching a crisis point. We had put our hearts into the effort, and it still was not going as we had expected. Rather than quit, however, we poured in more money and determination and plowed ahead. We mailed a flyer to a list of 15,000 engineers and scientists, suggesting an alternative means for feeding measurement data to their computers. The mailing was a success. The company shipped $78,000 in products that year and its future brightened. On November 9, 1979, I joined NI full time. Jeff joined February 1, 1980, and Bill joined April 1, 1980. We were on our way. Today, I am proud to say that National Instruments is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation -- a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government, and academia approach measurement and automation. For more than 28 years, National Instruments has delivered virtual instrumentation solutions built on rapidly advancing commercial technologies, including industry-standard computers and the Internet. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control, and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, USB, and Ethernet. |
President, CEO, and Cofounder Dr. James Truchard offers his personal account of the events that led to the company's founding.