The NI, formerly the National Instruments Corporation, is an American multinational company headquartered in Austin, Texas. NI is the producer of automated test equipment, semiconductor production equipment, and virtual instrumentation software. Following its acquisition by Emerson Electric in October 2023, NI has operated as Emerson’s test and measurement business unit. In 2022, NI sold products to more than 35,000 companies worldwide, generating $1.66 billion USD in revenue.
History
Foundation 1970s In the early 1970s, James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin worked at the University of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratories. While working on a project for the U.S. Navy, they used emerging computer technology to collect and analyze data. The group sought to develop a GPIB interface for the PDP-11/04 minicomputer. In 1976, they founded a company in Truchard's garage. They initially attempted to incorporate under names such as Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but trademarks of these names were rejected. Ultimately, they established the name National Instruments. With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group purchased a PDP-11/04 minicomputer and commenced their first project by designing and building a GPIB interface for it. Their first sale was to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. At that time, the three founders were still employed at the University of Texas. In 1977, the company employed its first full-time staff member, Kim Harrison-Hosen. By that time, it had sold a limited number of products. The company produced and distributed a mailer to 15,000 users of the PDP-11 minicomputer. As sales began to rise, it relocated to a dedicated office space, occupying a 600-square-foot office at 9513 Burnet Road in Austin. Later, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit.
1980s In 1980, Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin resigned from their positions to devote themselves full-time to NI. Soon afterwards, they moved the company to a larger office, renting 5,000 square feet (500 m2) of office space. To assist in generating revenue, the company undertook numerous projects, including a fuel-pump credit-card system and a waveform generator for U.S. Navy sonar acoustic testing. In 1981, the company reached the $1 million sales mark, leading them to move to a 10,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) office in 1982. In 1983, NI developed its first GPIB board to connect instruments to IBM PCs. With the arrival of the Macintosh computer, Kodosky began a research initiative with the assistance of student researchers at the University of Texas into ways to utilize the new interface. This led to the creation of NI's flagship product, the LabVIEW graphical development platform for the Macintosh computer, which was released in 1986. The software allows engineers and scientists to program graphically by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. The following year, a version of LabVIEW, known as LabWindows, was released for the DOS environment. By 1986, the company had 100 employees. NI opened its first international branch in Tokyo the following year.
1990s
After outgrowing its rented space, NI relocated to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway in 1990, which the company purchased in 1991. That building, located along Lake Austin near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills Bridge Point." NI received its first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later that same year, they introduced Signal Conditioning Extensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) to expand the signal-processing capabilities of the PC, and in 1992, LabVIEW was first released for Windows-based PCs and Unix workstations. NI also created the National Instruments Alliance Partner program. (NIAP) In 1993, the company reached the milestone of $100 million in annual sales. In late 1993, NI released LabWindows/CVI for C/C++ programmers.. The following year, an employee began experiments with the relatively new World Wide Web and developed natinst.com, the company's very first web page. The company began to run out of room on its approximately 136,000-square-foot (12,600 m2) campus. In 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, located at a 72-acre (290,000 m2) site along North Mopac Boulevard in northern Austin. By this time, NI had reached 1,000 employees. The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, contains dedicated "play" areas, including basketball and volleyball courts, an employee gym, and a campus-wide walking trail. Each of the buildings on the campus is lined with windows and features an open floor plan. Employees had been granted stock in the privately held company as part of their compensation packages. When NI went public in 1995, over 300 current and former employees owned stock. The company was listed on the Nasdaq exchange as NATI. By the late 1990s, the company provided more advanced DAQ boards that could replace vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system. With the company's acquisition of Georgetown Systems Lookout software, NI products were further incorporated into applications run on the factory floor. By 1996, the company had reached $200 million in annual sales and was named to Forbes magazine's 200 Best Small Companies list. NI would later release machine vision software and hardware. NI also introduced the CompactPCI-based PXI, an open industry standard for modular measurement and automation, and NI TestStand, which provides for tracking high-volume manufacturing tests.
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