Oscilloscopes



An oscilloscope (sometimes abbreviated CRO, for cathode-ray oscilloscope, or commonly just scope or O-scope) is a piece of electronic test equipment that allows signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences (vertical axis) plotted as a function of time or of some other voltage (horizontal axis).

Exterior
A typical oscilloscope is usually box shaped with a display screen, numerous input connectors, control knobs and buttons on the front panel. To aid measurement, a grid called the graticule is drawn on the face of the screen. Each square in the graticule is known as a division.

Inputs
The signal to be measured is fed to one of the input connectors, which is usually a coaxial connector such as a BNC or N type. If the signal source has its own coaxial connector, then a simple coaxial cable is used; otherwise, a specialised cable called a 'scope probe', supplied with the oscilloscope, is used. General-purpose oscilloscopes have a standardised input resistance of 1 megohm in parallel with a capacitance of around 20 picofarads. This allows the use of standard oscilloscope probes. Scopes for use with very high frequencies may have 50-ohm inputs, which must be either connected directly to a 50-ohm signal source or used with Z0 or active probes. It is used for measuring voltage.

The trace
In its simplest mode, the oscilloscope repeatedly draws a horizontal line called the trace across the middle of the screen from left to right. One of the controls, the timebase control, sets the speed at which the line is drawn, and is calibrated in seconds per division. If the input voltage departs from zero, the trace is deflected either upwards or downwards. Another control, the vertical control, sets the scale of the vertical deflection, and is calibrated in volts per division. The resulting trace is a graph of voltage against time (the present plotted at a varying position, the less recent past to the left, the most recent past to the right).

If the input signal is periodic, then a nearly stable trace can be obtained just by setting the timebase to match the frequency of the input signal. For example, if the input signal is a 50 Hz sine wave, then its period is 20 ms, so the timebase should be adjusted so that the time between successive horizontal sweeps is 20 ms. This mode is called continual sweep. Unfortunately, an oscilloscope's timebase is not perfectly accurate, and the frequency of the input signal is not perfectly stable, so the trace will drift across the screen making measurements difficult.

Trigger
To provide a more stable trace, modern oscilloscopes have a function called the trigger. When using triggering, the scope will pause each time the sweep reaches the extreme right side of the screen. The scope then waits for a specified event before drawing the next trace. The trigger event is usually the input waveform reaching some user-specified threshold voltage in the specified direction (going positive or going negative).

The effect is to resynchronise the timebase to the input signal, preventing horizontal drift of the trace. In this way, triggering allows the display of periodic signals such as sine waves and square waves. Trigger circuits also allow the display of nonperiodic signals such as single pulses or pulses that don't recur at a fixed rate.

Types of trigger include:
 * external trigger, a pulse from an external source connected to a dedicated input on the scope.
 * edge trigger, an edge-detector that generates a pulse when the input signal crosses a specified threshold voltage in a specified direction.
 * video trigger, a circuit that extracts synchronising pulses from video formats such as PAL and NTSC and triggers the timebase on every line, a specified line, every field, or every frame. This circuit is typically found in a waveform monitor device.
 * delayed trigger, which waits a specified time after an edge trigger before starting the sweep. No trigger circuit acts instantaneously, so there is always a certain delay, but a trigger delay circuit extends this delay to a known and adjustable interval. In this way, the operator can examine a particular pulse in a long train of pulses.

Other features
Some oscilloscopes have cursors, which are lines that can be moved about the screen to measure the time interval between two points, or the difference between two voltages.

Oscilloscopes may have two or more input channels, allowing them to display more than one input signal on the screen. Usually the oscilloscope has a separate set of vertical controls for each channel, but only one triggering system and timebase.

Sometimes the event that the user wants to see may only happen occasionally. To catch these events, some oscilloscopes, known as "storage scopes", preserve the most recent sweep on the screen. This was originally achieved by using a special CRT, a "storage tube", which would retain the image of even a very brief event for a long time.

Some digital oscilloscopes can sweep at speeds as slow as once per hour, emulating a strip chart recorder. That is, the signal scrolls across the screen from right to left. Most oscilloscopes with this facility switch from a sweep to a strip-chart mode right around one sweep per ten seconds. This is because otherwise, the scope looks broken: it's collecting data, but the dot cannot be seen.

Oscilloscopes were originally analog devices. In more recent times digital signal sampling is more often used for all but the simplest models.

Many oscilloscopes have different plug-in modules for different purposes, e.g., high-sensitivity amplifiers of relatively narrow bandwidth, differential amplifiers, amplifiers with 4 or more channels, sampling plugins for repetitive signals of very high frequency, and special-purpose plugins.

Examples of use
One of the most frequent uses of scopes is troubleshooting malfunctioning electronic equipment. One of the advantages of a scope is that it can graphically show signals: where a voltmeter may show a totally unexpected voltage, a scope may reveal that the circuit is oscillating. In other cases the precise shape of a pulse is important.

In a piece of electronic equipment, for example, the connections between stages (e.g. electronic mixers, electronic oscillators, amplifiers) may be 'probed' for the expected signal, using the scope as a simple signal tracer. If the expected signal is absent or incorrect, some preceding stage of the electronics is not operating correctly. Since most failures occur because of a single faulty component, each measurement can prove that half of the stages of a complex piece of equipment either work, or probably did not cause the fault.

Once the faulty stage is found, further probing can usually tell a skilled technician exactly which component has failed. Once the component is replaced, the unit can be restored to service, or at least the next fault can be isolated.

Another use is to check newly designed circuitry. Very often a newly designed circuit will misbehave because of design errors, bad voltage levels, electrical noise etc. Digital electronics usually operate from a clock, so a dual-trace scope which shows both the clock signal and a test signal dependent upon the clock is useful. "Storage scopes" are helpful for "capturing" rare electronic events that cause defective operation.

Another use is for software engineers who must program electronics. Often a scope is the only way to see if the software is running the electronics properly.

Tips for use

 * The most typical problem encountered when approaching an unfamiliar scope is that the trace is not visible. Many newer scopes have a "reset options" or "auto set up" button. Use it when you get confused, or when you first approach an unfamiliar scope. Some scopes have a "beamfinder" button. It limits the size of the scan so the trace will appear on the screen.


 * Make sure that at first you set the options of a channel to "DC" coupling, with automatic triggering. Increase the channel's volts per division (effectively dividing down the line height) until a line appears. Set the sweep time per division near the speed of the desired event, and then adjust the volts per division until the event appears at a useful size.


 * Oscilloscopes almost always have a test output that one can measure to assure that a channel and probe are working. When approaching an unfamiliar oscilloscope, it's wise to measure this signal first.


 * The capacitance of the wire in the test probe can cause an oscilloscope to display high-speed signals inaccurately. For example, the leading and trailing edges of a square wave may seem to be over- or under-shooting, due to an incorrectly compensated probe. Many probes (voltage divider types, such as x10 and x100 probes) allow this to be compensated for by adjusting a trimmer capacitor. Probes should always be set to show square waves properly; most scopes have a square wave test-signal output for this purpose.


 * The bandwidth of the test probes should exceed the bandwidth of the oscilloscope's input amplifiers.


 * The signal ground connection of the oscilloscope should be attached to the ground of the circuit under test, although this is clearly not possible when measuring the difference between two voltages neither of which is ground. Most test leads for oscilloscopes have the ground clip built into their end. To accurately probe high-speed signals, the ground lead must be kept as short as possible; at frequencies above 100 MHz, the flying ground lead should be removed and replaced with a small ground pin which slips over the ground ring at the tip of the probe.


 * If the oscilloscope has connection to mains earth, it is likely that the test lead ground is also attached to mains earth (via the oscilloscope chassis). If the circuit under test is also referenced to mains earth, then attaching the probe ground to any signal will effectively act like a short circuit to earth, possibly causing damage to the circuit under test or the oscilloscope itself. This can be alleviated by supplying power to the circuit under test via an isolation transformer. A common but dangerous mistake is to use the isolation transformer to power the oscilloscope ("float" it) instead of the circuit under test. This allows dangerous voltages to be present on the metal parts of the oscilloscope, which is an unacceptable electrocution risk. Removing the ground connection of the power cord is of course not acceptable either. Alternatively an oscilloscope isolation amplifier can be used to isolate the probe grounds from the oscilloscope earth ground, this is also a good solution if the DUT can not be powered via an isolation transformer. Differential amplifiers or probes are another solution to the problem.


 * "AC coupling" blocks any DC in the signal. This is useful when measuring a small signal riding on a DC offset.  Note that the AC coupling mode simply adds an internal series capacitor, which will affect low-frequency response.


 * "DC coupling" must be used when measuring a DC voltage.


 * Make sure you are triggering from the correct channel. Set the trigger delay to zero. Adjust the trigger level until the desired event triggers. Last of all, adjust the trigger delay until the desired signal feature appears.


 * Scope probes are both expensive and fragile. To reduce capacitance, the conductor in a scope probe's wire is sometimes narrower than a human hair.  The plastic "pen" part of the probe is often easy to break.  Never leave a probe on the floor where one can walk on it.  If you must share a scope, consider having and protecting your own set of probes.

Selection
Oscilloscopes generally have a checklist of some set of the above features. The basic measure of virtue is the bandwidth of its vertical amplifiers. Typical scopes for general purpose use should have a bandwidth of at least 100 MHz, although much lower bandwidths are acceptable for audio-frequency applications. A useful sweep range is from one second to 100 nanoseconds, with triggering and delayed sweep. For work on digital signals, dual channels are necessary, and a storage scope with a sweep speed of at least 1/5 your system's maximum frequency is recommended.

The chief benefit of a quality oscilloscope is the quality of the trigger circuit. If the trigger is unstable, the display will always be fuzzy. The quality improves roughly as the frequency response and voltage stability of the trigger increase.

Digital storage scopes (almost the only kind now available at the higher end of the market) used to display misleading signals at low sample rates, but this "aliasing" problem is now much rarer due to increased memory length. It's worth asking about in the used market, though.

As of 2004, a 150 MHz dual-channel storage scope costs about US$1200 new, and is good for accurate use up to about 15 MHz. The current bandwidth record, as of May 2006, is held by the LeCroy SDA18000 oscilloscope family with a digital bandwidth interleaving bandwidth of up to 18 GHz and costing about US$166,400. The current bandwidth record for sampling digital storage oscilloscopes, as of June 2006, is held by the LeCroy WaveExpert® series with a bandwidth of 100 GHz and costing about US$55,000 for the mainframe with plug-in modules costing US$7,000 to US$68,300.

Cathode-ray oscilloscope (CRO)
The earliest and simplest type of oscilloscope consisted of a cathode ray tube, a vertical amplifier, a timebase, a horizontal amplifier and a power supply. These are now called 'analogue' scopes to distinguish them from the 'digital' scopes that became common in the 1990s and 2000s.

Before the introduction of the CRO in its current form, the cathode ray tube had already been in use as a measuring device. The cathode ray tube is an evacuated glass envelope, similar to that in a black-and-white television set, with its flat face covered in a phosphorescent material (the phosphor). The screen is typically less than 20 cm in diameter, much smaller than the one in a television set.

In the neck of the tube is an electron gun, which is a heated metal plate with a wire mesh (the grid) in front of it. A small grid potential is used to block electrons from being accelerated when the electron beam needs to be turned off, as during sweep retrace or when no trigger events occur. A potential difference of at least several hundred volts is applied to make the heated plate (the cathode) negatively charged relative to the deflection plates. For higher bandwidth oscilloscopes where the trace may move more rapidly across the phosphor target, a positive post-deflection acceleration voltage of over 10,000 volts is often used, increasing the energy (speed) of the electrons that strike the phosphor. The kinetic energy of the electrons is converted by the phosphor into visible light at the point of impact. When switched on, a CRT normally displays a single bright dot in the center of the screen, but the dot can be moved about electrostatically or magnetically. The CRT in an oscilloscope uses electrostatic deflection.

Between the electron gun and the screen are two opposed pairs of metal plates called the deflection plates. The vertical amplifier generates a potential difference across one pair of plates, giving rise to a vertical electric field through which the electron beam passes. When the plate potentials are the same, the beam is not deflected. When the top plate is positive with respect to the bottom plate, the beam is deflected upwards; when the field is reversed, the beam is deflected downwards. The horizontal amplifier does a similar job with the other pair of deflection plates, causing the beam to move left or right. This deflection system is called electrostatic deflection, and is different from the electromagnetic deflection system used in television tubes. In comparison to magnetic deflection, electrostatic deflection can more readily follow random changes in potential, but is limited to small deflection angles.

The timebase is an electronic circuit that generates a ramp voltage. This is a voltage that changes continuously and linearly with time. When it reaches a predefined value the ramp is reset, with the voltage reestablishing its initial value. When a trigger event is recognized the reset is released, allowing the ramp to increase again. The timebase voltage usually drives the horizontal amplifier. Its effect is to sweep the electron beam at constant speed from left to right across the screen, then quickly return the beam to the left in time to begin the next sweep. The timebase can be adjusted to match the sweep time to the period of the signal.

Meanwhile, the vertical amplifier is driven by an external voltage (the vertical input) that is taken from the circuit or experiment that is being measured. The amplifier has a very high input impedance, typically one megohm, so that it draws only a tiny current from the signal source. The amplifier drives with vertical deflection plates with a voltage that is proportional to the vertical input. Because the electrons have already been accelerated by hundreds of volt, this amplifier also has to deliver almost hundred volts, and this with a very high bandwidth. The gain of the vertical amplifier can be adjusted to suit the amplitude of the input voltage. A positive input voltage bends the electron beam upwards, and a negative voltage bends it downwards, so that the vertical deflection of the dot shows the value of the input. The response of this system is much faster than that of mechanical measuring devices such as the multimeter, where the inertia of the pointer slows down its response to the input.

When all these components work together, the result is a bright trace on the screen that represents a graph of voltage against time. Voltage is on the vertical axis, and time on the horizontal.

Observing high speed signals, especially nonrepetitive signals, with a conventional CRO is difficult, often requiring the room to be darkened or a special viewing hood to be placed over the face of the display tube. To aid in viewing such signals, special oscilloscopes have borrowed from night vision technology, employing a microchannel plate in the tube face to amplify faint light signals.

Although a CRO allows one to view a signal, in its basic form it has no means of recording that signal on paper for the purpose of documentation. Therefore, special oscilloscope cameras were developed to photograph the screen directly. Early cameras used roll or plate film, while in the 1970s Polaroid® instant cameras became popular.

The vertical amplifier and timebase controls are calibrated to show the vertical distance on the screen that corresponds to a given voltage difference, and the horizontal distance that corresponds to a given time interval.

The power supply is an important component of the scope. It provides low voltages to power the cathode heater in the tube, and the vertical and horizontal amplifiers. High voltages are needed to drive the electrostatic deflection plates. These voltages must be very stable. Any variations will cause errors in the position and brightness of the trace.

Later analogue oscilloscopes added digital processing to the standard design. The same basic architecture - cathode ray tube, vertical and horizontal amplifiers - was retained, but the electron beam was controlled by digital circuitry that could display graphics and text mixed with the analogue waveforms. The extra features that this system provides include:
 * on-screen display of amplifier and timebase settings;
 * voltage cursors - adjustable horizontal lines with voltage display;
 * time cursors - adjustable vertical lines with time display;
 * on-screen menus for trigger settings and other functions.

Dual beam oscilloscope
A dual beam oscilloscope was a type of oscilloscope once used to compare one signal with another. There were two beams produced in special type of CRT. Unlike an ordinary "dual-trace" oscilloscope (which time-shared a single electron beam, thus losing about 50% of each signal), a dual beam oscilloscope simultaneously produced two separate electron beams, capturing the entirety of both signals.

Two vertical plates deflected the beams. Vertical plates for channel A had no effect on channel B beam. Similarly for channel B, separate vertical plates existed which deflected the beam B only.

On some scopes the time base, horizontal plates and horizontal amplifier were common to both beams; on more elaborate scopes like the Tektronix 556 there were two independent time bases and two sets of horizontal plates and horizontal amplifiers. Thus one could look at a very fast signal on one beam and a slow signal on another beam.

Most multichannel 'scopes do not actually have multiple electron beams. Instead, they display only one dot at a time, but switch the dot between one channel and the other either on alternate sweeps (ALT mode) or many times per sweep (CHOP mode). Very few actual dual beam oscilloscopes were built; in these, the electron gun formed two electron beams and there were two sets of vertical deflection plates and one common set of horizontal deflection plates.

With the coming of digital signal capture, true dual beam oscilloscopes became obsolete.

Analogue storage oscilloscope
An extra feature available on some analogue scopes is called 'storage'. This feature allows the trace pattern that normally decays in a fraction of a second to remain on the screen for several minutes or longer. An electrical circuit can then be deliberately activated to store and erase the trace on the screen.

The storage is accomplished using the principle of secondary emission. When the ordinary writing electron beam passes a point on the phosphor surface, not only does it momentarily cause the phosphor to illuminate, but the kinetic energy of the electron beam knocks other electrons loose from the phosphor surface. This can leave a net positive charge. Storage oscilloscopes then provide one or more secondary electron guns (called the "flood guns") that provide a steady flood of low-energy electrons traveling towards the phosphor screen. The electrons from the flood guns are more strongly drawn to the areas of the phosphor screen where the writing gun has left a net positive charge; in this way, the electrons from the flood guns re-illuminate the phosphor in these positively-charged areas of the phosphor screen.

If the energy of the flood gun electrons is properly balanced, each impinging flood gun electron knocks out one secondary electron from the phosphor screen, thus preserving the net positive charge in the illuminated areas of the phosphor screen. In this way, the image originally written by the writing gun can be maintained for a long time. Eventually, small imbalances in the secondary emission ratio cause the entire screen to "fade positive" (light up) or cause the originally-written trace to "fade negative" (extinguish). It is these imbalances that limit the ultimate storage time possible.

Some oscilloscopes used a strictly binary (on/off) form of storage known as "bistable storage". Others permitted a constant series of short, incomplete erasure cycles which created the impression of a phosphor with "variable persistence". Certain oscilloscopes also allowed the partial or complete shutdown of the flood guns, allowing the preservation (albeit invisibly) of the latent stored image for later viewing. (Fading positive or fading negative only occurs when the flood guns are "on"; with the flood guns off, only leakage of the charges on the phosphor screen degrades the stored image.)

Digital storage oscilloscope
The digital storage oscilloscope, or DSO for short, is now the preferred type for most industrial applications, although simple analogue CROs are still used by hobbyists. It replaces the unreliable storage method used in analogue storage scopes with digital memory, which can store data as long as required without degradation. It also allows complex processing of the signal by high-speed digital signal processing circuits.

The vertical input, instead of driving the vertical amplifier, is digitised by an analog to digital converter to create a data set that is stored in the memory of a microprocessor. The data set is processed and then sent to the display, which in early DSOs was a cathode ray tube, but is now more likely to be an LCD flat panel. DSOs with colour LCD displays are common. The data set can be sent over a LAN or a WAN for processing or archiving. The screen image can be directly recorded on paper by means of an attached printer or plotter, without the need for an oscilloscope camera. The scope's own signal analysis software can extract many useful time-domain features (e.g. rise time, pulse width, amplitude), frequency spectra, histograms and statistics, persistence maps, and a large number of parameters meaningful to engineers in specialized fields such as telecommunications, disk drive analysis and power electronics.

Digital oscilloscopes are limited principally by the performance of the analogue input circuitry and the sampling frequency. In general, the sampling frequency should be at least the Nyquist rate, double the frequency of the highest-frequency component of the observed signal, otherwise aliasing may occur.

Digital storage also makes possible another unique type of oscilloscope, the equivalent-time sample scope. Instead of taking consecutive samples after the trigger event, only one sample is taken. However, the oscilloscope is able to vary its timebase to precisely time its sample, thus building up the picture of the signal over the subsequent repeats of the signal. This requires that either a clock or repeating pattern be provided. This type of scope is frequently used for very high speed communication because it allows for a very high "sample rate" and low amplitude noise compared to traditional real-time scopes.

To sum this up: Advantages over the analogue oscilloscope:
 * Brighter and bigger display with color to distinguish multiple traces
 * Equivalent time sampling and Average across consecutive samples or scans lead to higher resolution down to µV
 * Peak detection
 * Pre-trigger
 * Easy pan and zoom across multiple stored traces allows beginners to work without a trigger
 * This needs a fast reaction of the display (some scopes have 1 s delay)
 * The knobs have to be large and turn smoothly
 * Also slow traces like the temperature variation across a day can be recorded
 * The memory of the oscilloscope can be arranged not only as a one-dimensional list but also as a two-dimensional array to simulate a phosphorus screen. The digital technique allows a quantitative analysis (E.g. Eye diagram)
 * Allows for automation, though most models lock the access to their software

A disadvantage of digital oscilloscopes is the limited refresh rate of the screen. On an analog oscilloscope, the user can get an intuitive sense of the trigger rate simply by looking at the steadiness of the CRT trace. For a digital oscilloscope, the screen looks exactly the same for any signal rate which exceeds the screen's refresh rate. Additionally, it is sometimes hard to spot "glitches" or other rare phenomena on the black-and-white screens of standard digital oscilloscopes; the slight persistence of CRT phosphors on analog scopes makes glitches visible even if many subsequent triggers overwrite them. Both of these difficulties have been overcome recently by "digital phosphor oscilloscopes", which store data at a very high refresh rate and display it with variable intensity, to simulate the trace persistence of a CRT scope.

Mixed signal oscilloscope
A mixed signal oscilloscope (or MSO) has two kinds of inputs, a small number (typically two or four) of analogue channels, and a larger number (typically sixteen) of digital channels. These measurements are acquired with a single time base, they are viewed on a single display, and any combination of these signals can be used to trigger the oscilloscope.

An MSO combines all the measurement capabilities and the use model of a Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) with some of the measurement capabilities of a logic analyzer. MSOs typically lack the advanced digital measurement capabilities and the large number of digital acquisition channels of full-fledged logic analyzers, but they are also much less complex to use. Typical mixed-signal measurement uses include the characterization and debugging of hybrid analog/digital circuits like: embedded systems, Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), Digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and control systems.

Hand held oscilloscope
There are now available from several manufacturers a variety of hand held oscilloscopes.

PC-based oscilloscope (PCO)
Although most people think of an oscilloscope as a self-contained instrument in a box, a new type of "oscilloscope" is emerging that consists of an external analogue-to-digital converter (sometimes with its own memory and perhaps even some data-processing ability) connected to a PC that provides the display, control interface, disc storage, networking and often the electrical power. The viability of these so-called PC-based oscilloscopes depends on the current widespread use and low cost of standardised PCs. This makes the instruments particularly suitable for the educational market, where PCs are commonplace but equipment budgets are often low.

The advantages of PC-based oscilloscopes include:
 * Lower cost (assuming the user already owns a PC).
 * Easy exporting of data to standard PC software such as spreadsheets and word processors.
 * Ability to control the instrument by running a custom program on the PC.
 * Use of the PC's networking and disc storage functions, which cost extra when added to a self-contained oscilloscope.
 * PC's typically have larger and higher resolution color displays which can be easier to read. Color can be utilized to diffentiate waveforms.  It can also show increased information including more of the waveform or extras like automatic waveform measurements and simultaneous alternative views.
 * Easier portability when used with a laptop PC.

There are also some disadvantages, which include:
 * Need for the owner to install oscilloscope software on the PC.
 * Time taken for the PC to boot, compared with the almost instant start-up of a self-contained oscilloscope (although, as some modern oscilloscopes are actually PCs or similar machines in disguise, this distinction is narrowing).
 * Reduced portability when used with a desktop PC.
 * Inconvenience of using part of the PC's screen for the oscilloscope display.

The distinction is becoming increasingly blurred, however, as mainstream oscilloscope vendors such as Tektronix convert their product line over to large-screen, PC-based oscilloscopes as well, albeit PCs equipped with very fast (multi-GHz) input digitizers and highly-customized human interfaces.

Oscilloscopes in popular culture
In the 1950s and 1960s, oscilloscopes were frequently used in movies and television programs to represent generic scientific and technical equipment, in much the same way that Jacob's ladders and Erlenmeyer flasks full of dry ice had been used by an earlier generation of filmmakers. The 1963–65 U.S. TV show The Outer Limits famously used a fluctuating oscilloscope image as the background to its opening credits ("There is nothing wrong with your television set....") while the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project prominently features a Tektronix RM503 rack-mounted oscilloscope.

Invention
Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) were developed in the late 19th century. At that time, the tubes were intended primarily to demonstrate and explore the physics of electrons (then known as cathode rays). Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the CRT oscilloscope as a physics curiosity in 1897, by applying an oscillating signal to electrically charged deflector plates in a phosphor-coated CRT. Applying a reference oscillating signal to the horizontal deflector plates and a test signal to the vertical deflector plates produced transient plots of electrical waveforms on the small phosphor screen. The first dual beam oscilloscope was developed in the late 1930s by the British company A.C.Cossor (later acquired by Raytheon). The CRT was not a true double beam type but used a split beam by placing a third plate between the vertical deflection plates. It was widely used during WWII for the development and servicing of radar equipment. Although extremely useful for examining the performance of pulse circuits they were not calibrated so could not be used as a measuring device. They were however useful in producing response curves of IF circuits and consequently a great aid in their accurate alignment.

The triggered oscilloscope
Oscilloscopes became a much more useful tool in 1946 when Howard C. Vollum and Jack Murdock invented the triggered oscilloscope,Tektonix Model 511. The first oscilloscopes used analog technology in which the electron beam traced on the oscilloscope's screen directly traced the input voltage's waveform. It would start a horizontal trace when the input voltage exceeded an adjustable threshold. Triggering allows stationary display of a repeating waveform, as multiple repetitions of the waveform are drawn over the exact same trace on the phosphor screen -- without triggering, multiple copies of the waveform are drawn in different places, giving an incoherent jumble or a moving image on the screen.

Tektronix
Vollum and Murdock went on to found Tektronix, the first manufacturer of calibrated oscilloscopes (which included a graticule on the screen and produced plots with calibrated scales on the axes of the screen). Later developments by Tektronix included the development of multiple-trace oscilloscopes for comparing signals either by time-multiplexing (via chopping or trace alternation) or by the presence of multiple electron guns in the tube. In 1973, Tektronix introduced the Direct View Bistable STorage Tube (DVBST), which allowed observing single pulse waveforms rather than (as previously) only repeating wave forms. By the late 1970s, with transistor components rather than vacuum tubes, Tektronix was selling oscilloscopes on which the signal trace traveled across the screen faster than the speed of light. Using micro-channel plates, the most-advanced analogue oscilloscopes (for example, the Tek 7104 mainframe) could display a visible trace (or allow the photography) of a single-shot event even when running at these extremely fast sweep speeds.

Digital oscilloscopes
Starting in the 1980s, digital oscilloscopes became prevalent. Digital storage oscilloscopes use a fast analog-to-digital converter and memory chips to record and show a digital representation of a waveform, yielding much more flexibility for triggering, analysis, and display than is possible with a classic analog oscilloscope. Unlike its analog predecessor, the digital storage oscilloscope can show pre-trigger events, opening another dimension to the recording of rare or intermittent events and troubleshooting of electronic glitches. As of 2006 most new oscilloscopes (aside from education and a few niche markets) are digital.

Oscilloscope trivia
During the years when oscilloscopes were built using vacuum tubes and, therefore, a great deal of high voltage electronics, it was a recommended service procedure to wash the interior circuits of one's oscilloscope! This was advised to prevent the build up of dust that may have caused low resistance and tracking paths from high voltage terminals. Tektronix published the recommended procedure in their company magazine TekScope. It involved a gentle, low-pressure application of water and dish detergent, followed by careful rinsing and drying of the instrument. In this way, the service technician could remove dust and other conductive contaminants that might otherwise impair the correct calibration of the instrument. The pre-servicing interior washing was continued long after semiconductor circuits had replaced tubes.

Information

 * Oscillograph 1911 Encyclopedia.
 * Online oscilloscope simulation
 * Oscilloscope Tutorial
 * Description of available types of oscilloscope
 * The Cathode Ray Tube site
 * Digital Storage Oscilloscope measurement basics
 * Oscilloscope FAQ
 * Oscilloscope Articles & Resources
 * Oscilloscope Tutorial Resource
 * Using a Common Oscilloscope

Scope manufacturers

 * Agilent
 * Fluke
 * LeCroy
 * Tektronix
 * Yokogawa

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