1980s

Here is a look at how the 80’s shaped the future of Brookhaven Instruments

• The company was founded in 1981 by Dr. Bruce Weiner, a physical chemist, and Dr. Walther Tscharnuter, a physicist

• The original BI-200SM goniometer used photomultiplier tubes instead of modern avalanche photodiodes. The 2030AT correlator required a specially designed interface instead of the standard readily available USB interface we use today. All of the measurement software ran on MS-DOS and PC-DOS!

• Brookhaven Instruments pioneers high-resolution particle sizing with the DCP and XDC centrifuge.
  
• The BI-8000AT correlator was housed in a 40 lb. computer with a 20 lb. monitor. It came equipped with a whopping 20MB hard drive and utilized 5 1/4″ floppy disks.

• The BI-90 was one of Brookhaven’s earliest particle sizing instruments. Originally, data could not be saved digitally; measurements had to be printed on a dot matrix printer. A later upgrade allowed the BI-90 to interface with an IBM-AT compatible computer, giving it the ability to view and recall measurements.