Chapter 2

What in the world is

Instrumentation?

This is a very good question, and it is the rare individual who knows the answer(s). For being such a
fascinating and lucrative career, not to mention being essential to any industrialized society, hardly
anyone knows what an Instrumentation is. Certainly you don’t find young children saying they want
to work as instrument technicians when they grow up.

Simply defined, Instrumentation is the practical application of technologies to the problem

of measurement and automatic control. Accurate measurement is obviously important for all
commercial and scientific ventures, and automatic control is vitally important to efficient operation
of industrial processes. Instrumentation as a career takes several different forms, many industries
employing multiple categories of instrumentation practitioner, some of them listed here (in no
particular order):

• Metrologists – people tasked with maintaining precise calibration standards, used to ensure
the accuracy of measuring devices

• Engineers – people responsible for designing measurement and control systems for industrial
use, including development of novel processes and procedures to answer technical challenges

• Designers – people who select, plan, and document the infrastructure of measurement and
control systems, including connection panels, cables, tubes and pipes, and support structures

• Programmers – people who develop software for digital control systems such as DCSs
(Distributed Control Systems) and PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers)

• Technicians – people who install, maintain, troubleshoot, and upgrade all manner of
measurement and control systems

• Fitters – people who install and replace tube and pipe connections associated with
measurement and control systems