Instrument time averaging

["George R. Cicotte" <gcicotte@cbvcp.com>]

Such instruments are and have been available, but one can't generally afford
them.  I know I've seen brochures from Canberra, Keithley, and some others
[Eberline and TechAssociates, maybe?].  Check with them.  I don't recall
where I saw it, but someone in the industry has been making telemetered
instruments that download directly to the PC for the integrated rates.

In effect, the old workhorse instruments do the time averaging already, or
the meter would never settle out.  If something better is needed, all one
has to do is pay for the electronics.  They're available.  I also recommend
a free publication called "Test and Measurement Instruments" which I think
has a web page one could search for.

V/R
George R. Cicotte
gcicotte@cbvcp.com

The above is with respect to Mr. Vest's posting:

>.. . .  a portable lead testing instrument  . . . readout was
>paint lead density (micrograms/cubic centimeter, or something like that),
>and it displayed a *range* of values.  The  . . . . the longer [the
operator] held it there, the >*narrower* that range got!  It made me wish we
had a radiation survey instrument that
>would do its own time averaging, instead of making the user try to eyeball it!
>
>When he was done with each wall, he hooked the instrument to a laptop PC and
>downloaded a *data log* containing the pertinent data for each point
>measured.  A comprehensible printout was not far behind.  [Nifty, but I
>personally don't see this feature as a significant improvement over writing
>down the data as you acquire it.] . . .