Anablog

I am researching my April 26 article about measuring very small currents. Jim Williams tipped me off to a great free resource about low-level measurements in general. If you take a minute to register at Keithley website you can request your own free copy of Keithley’s Low-level Measurements Handbook. This half-inch thick book looks like it will be a great help for my article and anything recommended by Jim Williams has to be pretty good. The book talks about the limits of measurements, the instruments you can use, and discuses measuring voltage, current, resistance and charge. My buddies at National Semi really liked the Keithley 2400 source-measure units. Furthermore they pointed out that Keithley does not use specialized hybrid modules in their equipemnt—just standard parts that you can still buy. This means you can fix Keithley stuff unlike, say, the tek 2465B 400 MHz scope that has a hybrid module that goes bad since they changed it from a glass-frit hermetic seal to an epoxy seal. Sometimes you can bake the hybrid in a vacuum oven and get it working again, but I digress. Keithley are champs with electrometers and current sources and a lot of other things. But you should never bid up their stuff on eBay, no, just leave those Keithley auctions alone—yup, nothing to see here folks, just move along. Wouldn’t want those Keithley prices going up because you know about how cool they are.