Recently I had an opportunity to talk to some budding engineers about oscilloscopes.  It turns out that working in the electronics industry has caused me to take more than a few things for granted.

When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, I was reminded of the moon landings of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Like many engineers my age, I grew up obsessed with the Apollo program. I thought it might be interesting to compare a scope that engineers and scientists would have used to put astronauts on the moon to the design tools we have today. In the late ‘60s, a lucky engineer would have probably had a Tektronix 547 DC-to-50 MHz oscilloscope on their bench.

Today, Tektronix launched the TBS1000 Series of digital oscilloscopes aimed at start-up businesses, schools, and serious hobbyists. 

TBS1152 Two-channel Digital Storage Oscilloscope, 150 MHz, 1 GS/s

The time appears to be right.